IN THE WORLD of journalism, everyone’s talking about the debut media column of Ben Smith at the New York Times.
Smith recounts how six years ago, when he was the editor at BuzzFeed News, he tried to hire A.G. Sulzberger, who at the time was the heir apparent to lead the New York Times. The Times then was on the skids, its stock sinking. The company was selling just about everything it owned to stay afloat. (That’s how John Henry acquired the Boston Globe and the Telegram & Gazette in 2013 at the bargain basement price of $70 million.)
Now the Times is thriving. The news organization has more digital subscribers than the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the 250 local Gannett papers combined. It employs 1,700 journalists, according to Smith, and the starting salary for a reporter is $104,600.
Many of the journalists who just a few years ago were going to create a new future for journalism are now working for the Times, including Smith. “I spent my whole career competing against the Times, so coming to work here feels a bit like giving in. And I worry that the success of the Times is crowding out the competition,” he writes
It’s a provocative idea, that the
New York Times is growing so big (it’s now trying to acquire Serial Productions, the podcast studio) that pretty soon no one else is going to be able to compete. Smith quotes
Jim VandeHei, the founder of Axios, who predicts the
New York Times is going to be a monopoly. “The
Times will get bigger and the niche will get nichier, and nothing else will survive,” he said.
On Twitter, Mitch Pugh, the executive editor of the Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, rejected the notion that the success of the New York Times is a troubling sign for local news outlets.
“Boston, Minneapolis and Seattle have thriving digital subscription businesses,” Pugh tweeted. “The numbers we need are achievable. But the better question is: What, exactly, is the alternative?”
Meet the Author
Editor, CommonWealth
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
Elizabeth Green, the cofounder of Chalkbeat, a nonprofit education news organization, tweeted
a cautionary response. “Monopoly is far less of two evils when alternative is no journalism,” she said. “But the misapplied success of their digital subscription business to local news, where it won’t work, is dangerous!”
Derek Wallbank, a senior editor at Bloomberg, tweeted an interesting take. “If NYT has found a solution for running a newspaper (invest in journalism, drive online $), and it works, then will investors demand that Gannett & others running the strategy of “job cuts + dividends & hope” change course?”
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