Beyond the blogwagon: Niche reporting at the New York Times

Posted by Martin Stabe on 31 October 2006 at 10:53
Tags: Blogs, Journalism, New York Times

As Andrew Grant-Adamson provides hard data to back up his view that some big media blogs “bring little benefit to their papers,” I’m trying to keep track of some examples of good practice that show how traditional news organisations can use blogging to best effect.

At last week’s World Digital Publishing Conference, the New York Times’ continuous news editor Neil Chase offered several examples about how even the Grey Lady of American journalism is finding ways of using blogs to create interesting new forms of journalism.

1. Allowing non-specialists to help cover a global event

Covering the World Cup presented a particular problem for a paper New York Times, said Chase. Many Americans don’t really get football — “they even call it ‘soccer’,” Chase quipped.

“When you say the word ‘soccer’ in American newsrooms, people pop up all over the place; not just sports reporters. There was a copy editor on the New York Times Magazine who was a big fan of a particular player. There was another guy who worked for the national news desk. As we talked about it, four or five other people stepped forward and said ‘Sure, I’m a reporter who normally covers police stories in New York but I’d love to cover the World Cup.’ So we set up a blog.”

The in-house enthusiasts supplemented the sports desks’ efforts in germany by covering matches from pubs in the immigrant neighbourhoods of New York and its suburbs, offering uniquely local colour to a global event.

2. Allowing reporters to compete with emerging competitors

In the New York state capital, Albany, the New York Times reporters wanted to compete with local political bloggers who were beginning to break stories they were working on with quick one-paragraph posts throughout the day. “We should be that blog, we should be that news source,” Chase recalled the competitive reporter complaining. And so the New York Times joined the Albany political blogosphere.

3. Using well-known journalists to grow the online audience

Restaurant reviewer Frank Bruni used to write one major review and one small article for the New York Times.

Chase explained: “We took some of his time, moved it away from writing the second piece for the newspaper — which took some discussion with his editors as you might imagine — and had him write a blog. He now writes more during the week; readers interact with him more; he’s having more fun and more people are probably reading him. But it was a conscious decision to say that ‘this man only has a certain number of hours in his week and he’s very expensive, let’s allocate his time.”

4. Allowing niche coverage of local politics

The New York Times set up a special blog to cover the mayoral election in Newark, New Jersey — “a town nobody cares about”, as Chase put it.

The blog was launched, Chase said, because “the reporter covering it was very excited, but knew she wouldn’t get very much space in the newspaper to cover it, but wanted to carry on reporting on it on a blog.”

“It because a very good example to everyone in the newsroom about how you could cover a story that way,” Chase said.

5. Quickly launching new revenue-generating micropublications

New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin realised that his global business news e-mail newsletter, DealBook — which is produced in Paris in time for the morning opening in New York — could make a successful blog.

“He made the case for how much more advertising we could sell, and we hired two more people to work on it,” said Chase.

The growth in pageviews and advertsing revenue have unfolded as projected, said Chase, all because a reporter with good business sense saw an opportunity for a new specialist online publication.

Yes, that’s right: Blogs can create new jobs in news organisations.

Tags: Blogs, Journalism, New York Times