How
the New York Times plans to conquer the world
America’s
best-known newspaper targets Europe and other markets in search of a
sustainable digital business.
By JOE POMPEO AND
ALEX SPENCE 5/16/16, 3:00 AM CET Updated 5/16/16, 7:59 AM CET
NEW YORK — One
night in March, in a jam-packed Austin, Texas beer garden where the
New York Times was throwing a party at the annual SXSW Interactive
festival, CEO Mark Thompson spent a few minutes chatting with a
reporter about the newspaper’s international ambitions.
The New York Times
now has north of a million digital subscribers, but only 13 percent
are from outside the United States. Thompson, a former head of the
BBC, and his colleagues are convinced there’s a wealth of
additional readers overseas who would be willing to pay for its
journalism on smartphones and computers.
“I
don’t see why we shouldn’t aspire to a digital subscriber count
of many millions,” Thompson told POLITICO.
It wasn’t the red
wine talking. A month later, the New York Times announced it would
spend $50 million over the next three years to jumpstart “a new era
of international growth.” The money is not only a massive cash
infusion, but a big bet on the New York Times’ odds of weathering
the newspaper apocalypse through a combination of digital smarts and
global scale.
“We
intend to cultivate a much larger and deeper readership in core
markets abroad” — CEO Mark Thompson
The future of the
business depends on it. Later than some of its counterparts in
smaller international markets, America’s best-known newspaper is
confronting a harsh reality of the new digital media environment:
revenues from readers at home won’t be enough to keep its newsroom
running.
The New York Times
will have to overcome formidable domestic competitors wherever it
expands, and make its distinctly American sensibility appeal to
readers in those places.
“Every part of the
company … needs to think creatively about attracting and retaining
a bigger non-American audience and growing revenue outside the U.S.,”
Thompson wrote in a staff memo in April co-signed by publisher Arthur
Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Dean Baquet.
“We intend to
cultivate a much larger and deeper readership in core markets
abroad.”
‘There’s a gap
to fill’
The project
technically lifted off in February, when the New York Times launched
a Spanish-language website, The New York Times en Español, for
readers in Latin America.
It was the paper’s
second foreign-language product, following a Chinese website created
several years earlier. The plan is to eventually charge NYT en
Español readers for access and then to replicate the model
elsewhere.
Beyond Latin
America, the New York Times has its eye on about 10 “key markets”
where it believes it can attract a substantial number of paying
readers, according to New York Times president of international
Stephen Dunbar-Johnson. He said they range from English-speaking
countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia, to places in
continental Europe like Germany and the Nordic countries, to Asian
markets like India and Japan.
At the same time,
Dunbar-Johnson told POLITICO the New York Times is exploring ways to
“optimize the core experience” for casual foreign readers already
coming to nytimes.com — a third of total web traffic — and to
convert them into regular customers.
The international
expansion is the New York Times’ biggest financial investment right
now.
“We believe
there’s a gap we’re well positioned to fill,” said
Dunbar-Johnson. “The Economist addresses its readers as if they’re
aspiring heads of state. The Financial Times and the Wall Street
Journal try to address them as if they’re captains of industry. Our
readers are people who are deeply curious about the world, not
necessarily because they want to run it, but because they want to
understand it and make it better.”
The international
expansion, which is rolling out as a cadre of U.S. print and digital
publications seek growth abroad, is the New York Times’ biggest
financial investment right now.
It stands to make
the New York Times more influential in other countries, not unlike
how the Guardian got on America’s radar by putting dozens of
journalists in the U.S. and chasing homegrown stories like the Edward
Snowden surveillance saga, which earned the 195-year-old British news
organization a Pulitzer Prize.
But whereas the
Guardian and other outlets are trying to make money from their global
growth primarily by going after advertisers, the New York Times is
banking on the success of its paid digital model, which hasn’t been
marketed aggressively outside the U.S. since it began requiring
readers to pay for unlimited digital access in 2011.
‘A very American
brand’
There’s a lot
riding on this. With the ongoing decline of legacy print revenues,
the New York Times has set an ambitious goal of growing its digital
revenues to $800 million by 2020, from about $400 million last year.
Digital subscriptions will be key to achieving that goal.
Thompson said the
New York Times has “got a lot more to do in the U.S.” in terms of
adding digital subscribers. But really, it will need many more
international customers to pull it off.
Not everyone is hot
on their prospects.
Douglas McCabe,
chief executive of the research firm Enders Analysis in London, said
“audiences in all countries are moving away from home news brands …
to free online services,” which will make it “extremely
challenging” for the New York Times to build up its pool of global
digital subscribers.
Another
consideration, according to McCabe, is the growing distribution power
of social media platforms like Facebook. “Consumption is moving
further and further away from content origination,” he said.
“There is no
question that the New York Times has much compelling content to offer
readers across the world,” said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of
research at the Oxford -based Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism.
“The bigger
question,” he said, “is what the problem that the Times solves
for people is supposed to be, and whether it helps people be part of
communities that they want to or need to be part of. Reading the New
York Times is part of being a certain kind of person in the US. It is
less clear that the Times occupies a similar position with its target
audiences” around the world.
International editor
Joe Kahn said that’s not an unfair assessment. He acknowledged that
the New York Times is “perceived as a very American media brand,
unlike some of the British idols”— the Guardian, the BBC, the
Daily Mail — “that long ago began the process of realizing their
home market is not large enough to sustain their businesses.”
But Kahn argued that
the New York Times’ “existing global footprint and reach” is
already impressive. According to the web measurement firm comScore,
there were 13.6 million visitors to nytimes.com outside the U.S. in
March, not counting mobile traffic, which is significant. “Everything
we’re doing is going to enhance and market our experience to be
ever more relevant” to overseas audiences, he said.
Leading the charge
A new “international
growth team” called NYT Global is leading the charge. It includes
journalists as well as sales, marketing and audience development
personnel.
“We have this
extraordinary brand recognition around the world, but not a lot of
relevance,” said Lydia Polgreen, a former New York Times foreign
correspondent who is heading up NYT Global on the editorial side.
“People know who we are, but they don’t have any sense that we
are for them. Every single product we have, all of them are really
great, and all of them are designed with the U.S. audience in mind.”
That’s what
Polgreen and her colleagues are out to change. She mentioned
President Obama’s recent trip to Cuba, which got massive,
meticulously coordinated coverage from the New York Times’
international desk, and yet didn’t generate a single article that
cracked the top-10 on NYT en Espanol. Instead, the number one piece
on the Spanish-language site that week was about Obama’s visit to
Argentina, which generated less interested in the U.S.
“From the
perspective of Latin America, that was much more important,” said
Polgreen. Similarly, she said, “Imagine you’re a reader in France
and come to the New York Times homepage. It’s completely dominated
by what to a foreign reader feels like really small-bore American
politics.”
The Spanish
newspaper of record, El País had already expanded aggressively
across the very turf that NYT en Espanol is now encroaching on.
In addition to
determining which other markets to storm, NYT Global also will be
looking at developing new editorial products around certain topics
with broad global appeal, like climate change, technology, gender
identity and urban life, said Polgreen. By the end of 2016, they
expect to have some conclusions about what they will launch next and
where.
Neither Polgreen nor
Kahn nor Dunbar-Johnson would share early figures from NYT en Espanol
to give a sense of how promising the global proposition is. But they
all said they were extremely pleased with the level of engagement
among readers. Icing on the cake: The site has landed advertising
campaigns with brands like Banamex, Acciona, Audi and Formula 1.
“This is a project
that has to prove its worth,” said Polgreen. “If we do not see a
path to monetization that will make this a growing concern, then
we’ll need to pivot.”
Of course the New
York Times won’t be without competition from other global media
brands in the markets into which it expands.
The Spanish
newspaper of record, El País, for instance, had already expanded
aggressively across the very turf that NYT en Espanol is now
encroaching on. Managing editor David Alandete said he’s watching
the New York Times’ project closely.
“Of course we are
worried,” he said. “We are worried about everyone that wants to
open in Spanish, because its competition, and the New York Times is a
newspaper of reference.”
Print in decline
Meanwhile, the New
York Times is in the process of examining its newsroom structure to
determine where there might be cost savings to be had. It’s an
exercise that has quickened the newsroom’s collective pulse, with
some journalists and departments wondering whether they should feel
vulnerable.
Their anxiety
certainly wasn’t tempered by an announcement last month that a
Paris operation long responsible for the New York Times’
international print edition would be shut down, pending a French
labor review process, in a move the company characterized as
necessary to its ongoing digital transformation.
Editing and
production functions for the the International New York Times are
being moved to New York and Hong Kong, with a proposed 70 out of 113
Paris-based jobs to be axed. If all goes as planned, the paper is
slated to be redesigned and relaunched in the fall, but Kahn and
Dunbar-Johnson wouldn’t divulge any details except to say it will
be heavy on enterprise reporting and analysis as opposed to the day’s
breaking news.
And what about the
$50 million that just landed in NYT Global’s lap?
Kahn said the money
will be spent on overseas pilot projects; research, analytics and
audience development needs related to the international expansion;
and staffing, starting with six senior leadership positions in key
areas including data, advertising and operations.
“There are a lot
of claims on that money already,” he said. “We’re not gonna
have trouble dispensing it.”
Authors:
Joe Pompeo and Alex
Spence
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário