Outsourcing the NYTimes biz section
Douglas McIntyre, the editor of 24/7 Wall St., suggests that one way the New York Times could cut its costs would be to outsource some of its business section content.
McIntyre writes, “One of the sections of The New York Times that must be costly to run is its business section. Looking at all the bylines, the staff must be in the dozens. But, a great deal of what runs in the business pages is not unique. Most of its is covered by Reuters, Bloomberg, FT, or The Wall Street Journal.
“As the cost of being in the news business stays high and revenue drops, networks are pooling reporting resources. Newspapers are sharing coverage of certain geographic areas. Websites such as Politico are offering newspapers coverage of Washington to save money on having bureaus following the federal government.
“The New York Times might be better off if it cut a deal with Bloomberg or the FT to handle its business section. The paper would still be competitive with The Wall Street Journal, and the move might be the start of a system to save a lot more money by doing something similar with other parts of the Times.”
Read more here.
Are you kidding? Apart from the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times has the only great business section of any US newspaper (The FT has a very different style (including less sourcing and is not read by most Americans, even the US edition).
Even the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which have decent international and national sections, have fairly dismal business sections for papers of their size compared to other papers in the English-speaking world. Getting rid of the NYT section would be a tragedy.
Wire reporters simply do not have the time or the resources to compete and their style is often dry compared to papers like the NYT. And someone needs to keep the WSJ honest, after recent follies like its claim that GM and Chrysler were back in takeover talks when they weren’t.