Does the New York Times really have any idea what its local strategy is? Today is the debut of its new Metropolitan Section. It replaces the old New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island, Connecticut and City sections which, as it says in its own press release, were eliminated to “cut costs.” New Jersey coverage is now limited to five zoned pages in the back of the section. There’s a restaurant review, one art review, one theater review, one feature and listings. The cover story of today’s section, “Big Pulpit,” is about a Brooklyn megachurch.
The same day it sent out its Metropolitan Section press release, the Times also announced a new Slovenia edition. True Slovenia is not Freedonia, but to discover the Times’ Slavic expansion just as it contracts here made me blink a few times. I did check twice to make sure I wasn’t on the Onion.
While contracting statewide coverage overall, the Times now has a laser-like focus on South Orange and Maplewood, where full-timer Tina Kelley oversees The Local. This despite having closed both its Newark and Trenton bureaus last year. While we can certainly understand the yearning to cover the bicycling renaissance in the Oranges, it seems that the Times is not deploying its manpower in the Garden State with any consideration to the public interest.
Maybe they should change their motto from “All the News That’s Fit to Print” to “All the News We Can Afford” or (more accurately) “All the News We Think We Can Sell Ads Against.” Which is fine. But enough with all the breastbeating about how legacy journalism is all that stands between us and barbarism.
Meanwhile, a letter just arrived at our house to tell us about an increase in home delivery rates. Note to Times: It’s a recession. Everybody else in America is cutting prices.
We’ll have to consider our home delivery once again. I get all the Times I need online or on my phone, but my husband likes reading it on paper and is addicted to the crossword. He also sees a home subscription as something of a charitable expense: our contribution to world-class journalism. But I can, and do, support world-class journalism for a fraction of a Times home subscription by supporting public radio.
The crossword is the only thing the Times doesn’t give away for free online. At $39.95 a year — $7 less than one month of daily home delivery — it’s starting to look like a good Father’s Day option.
(Disclosure: For five years, I wrote the Jersey column for the Times.)
I get the weekender edition (Fri. Sat. Sun.) because I, too like the challenging crosswords the end of the week. But even as a weekend subscriber I can get the Times (and the Puzzles) free all week. When, as is often the case, I can’t complete a Saturday puzzle, I can find the missing or erroneous words online the next day. But it is getting expensive — the weekender is going up to about $33 a month. We also get the Ledger, which the canary adores.
Actually, the NJ section died months ago, replaced by something like around the region. As a true separate section, we stopped being important a while ago.
I get the Times weekly. They just raised the price (again) to $47/month.
I’m considering getting a Kindle DX and subscribing to the Times with it.
Kindle $500
NYT Sub $168/year
NYTimes monthly delivery $560/year
So in 1 year 7 months the Kindle is paid off and I get the Times for just $14/month.
Or I can just read it online for free (I’ve been practicing how to approximate my way through the website as I do the paper…)
The only time I purchase a newspaper is when the kids have an assignment that’s “based on an article from the newspaper” or when I need a fire starter.
gotta say, I’m a religious daily reader of the paper Times (old school) and I almost never read the NJ section. Even my wife, who reads Sunday Styles, never read it.
If I cared about NJ, i’d read the Star Ledger or Montclair Times.
Or baristanet.
No NJ Section? Oh well, no problem, as long as they continue writing stuff like this….
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/realestate/24living.html?_r=1
“Even my wife, who reads Sunday Styles, never read it.”
This is a slag, I’m just not sure who it’s directed at…
I miss the NJ section and to compare it to the Ledger is odd.
For those of us who find the Ledger to be unreadable, the NJ section was a nice summary of the happenings.
Doesn’t matter, all these papers will be out of business in the next 5 years.
That’s some pretty interesting math there, prof.
A farewell to (Baristanet)
I know what the operators of this site mean. I blinked a few times myself when discovering that the forums section here on Baristanet was taken down. Besides blaming previous porn spam (not reported in some time) and low activity (Bloomfield hits had grown over the last year to reach regularly into the hundreds with most posts), the real culprit the java junkies claimed was abusive posting. As I was the only one to have a portion of a post excised at that time, I offer it here:
I offer it again because frankly I don’t care much what action the handlers take now. The forums were the only reason I visited this site anyway.
The coffee klatchers thoughtfully tossed a bone to forum users by offering to include open threads for issues unrelated to stories of the day. I’ll be taking a pass on that. I don’t see myself as some circus animal performing for treats. I prefer to write about what I want, when I want in threads of my choosing or creation.
So I had a long, last laugh at the whiny pontificating over changes occurring at the Times. I’ll pose the same rhetorical question the gallant one did to the Old Gray Lady: “Does (Baristanet) really have any idea what its local strategy is?”
While I’m no big admirer of the New York Times, I think that this website attempts to critique the newspaper is an interesting, out-of-left-field definition of both hubris and presumption in the extreme.
Does anyone know:
Is it standard procedure for the Sunday Times issues sold in NJ not to have a classified advertising section?
When we bought the Sunday Times here regularly, back in the 1990s, there were intermittent bulk delivery problems resulting in the absence of various sections.
My wife bought one yesterday specifically for the classifieds & there weren’t any. Since we were on the Cross Bronx by the time she discovered this, there was no opportunity to go back to the store & ask.
Now I’m wondering whether this is another cost-cutting move. Makes perfect sense; after all, no one in New Jersey is interested in working in New York.
The classifieds are generally found in the back pages of the Business section, crank. There hasn’t been a stand-alone Classified section in the NYT in about two years, maybe more. So goes the newspaper industry.
Thank you cathar. Right you are. The job listings take up less than 2 pages now. Very different times, as well as Times.