Press Check

New York Times Introduces Digital Subscriptions

Evan Serpick — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:37:03 +0000

Today The New York Times announced that it would begin requiring heavy users of its website to buy a digital subscription, which range from roughly $15 to $35 per month. The letter to readers from Arthur Sulzberger is below.

It's not quite what David Simon had in mind when wrote in the The Columbia Journalism Review that the Times and The Washington Post should "build a wall" and require users of digital content to pay for it—The Times will still allow people to use it's website and mobile/tablet aps for free, up to 20 articles a month—but it's a major step in that direction. The question remains whether the strategy will spread and help other beleaguered newspapers, including the Sun, regain their footing.

An important announcement from
the publisher of The New York Times

Dear New York Times Reader,

Today marks a significant transition for The New York Times as we introduce digital subscriptions. It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Times, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform. The change will primarily affect those who are heavy consumers of the content on our Web site and on mobile applications.

This change comes in two stages. Today, we are rolling out digital subscriptions to our readers in Canada, which will enable us to fine-tune the customer experience before our global launch. On March 28, we will begin offering digital subscriptions in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

If you are a home delivery subscriber of The New York Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion and the rest of our rich offerings on your computer, smartphone and tablet. International Herald Tribune subscribers will also receive free access to NYTimes.com.

If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access up to a defined reading limit. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber.

This is how it will work, and what it means for you:

On NYTimes.com, you can view 20 articles each month at no charge (including slide shows, videos and other features). After 20 articles, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber, with full access to our site.
On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to all other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.
The Times is offering three digital subscription packages that allow you to choose from a variety of devices (computer, smartphone, tablet). More information about these plans is available at nytimes.com/access.
Again, all New York Times home delivery subscribers will receive free access to NYTimes.com and to all content on our apps. If you are a home delivery subscriber, go to homedelivery.nytimes.com to sign up for free access.
Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.
The home page at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse for all users at all times.

For more information, go to nytimes.com/digitalfaq.

Thank you for reading The New York Times, in all its forms.

Sincerely,

Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
Publisher, The New York Times
Chairman, The New York Times Company

New Icon on Bmag Stories

Evan Serpick — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:35:41 +0000

As we announced yesterday, Baltimore magazine is a media partner for an innovative media experiment called NewsTrust Baltimore, where readers can review and rate stories from local media and help the best local journalism come to the fore.

Today, we've added a NewsTrust button, pictured here, to the bottom of all the stories posted to our website, including the blogs. We hope that after you read a story, you'll click on that link and review it (you'll be required to sign in to NewsTrust - it's free and takes about 30 seconds using your Facebook account). There's a bustling community of readers sprouting up over there. We' hope you'll join the fray with us.

A Great Baltimore Media Experiment Begins Today!

Evan Serpick — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:01:45 +0000

For the next two months, Baltimore magazine will be participating in a democratic media experiment designed to help people find and promote good local journalism.

NewsTrust, a national non-profit that helps people share and promote good journalism from various news sources, has just today launched NewsTrust Baltimore, it's first ever local site. At the site, users can post stories about Baltimore they want to share with others, and also read, rate, and comment on stories that others have posted. The best stories will be promoted to the top of the home page. Several local news organizations, including Baltimore magazine, The Baltimore Sun, and WYPR have agreed to partner with Newstrust to promote the experiment. In addition, several local high schools and colleges will be using the site as a teaching tool to learn about journalism.

We're really excited to excited to be involved in this project, which is supported by a grant from the Baltimore-based Open Society Institute. Sign up at the site (it's free), start exploring, and stay tuned for more information.

Ex-Sun Editor Monty Cook Fired in Chat Scandal

Evan Serpick — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:20:08 +0000

Just eight months after Montgomery Cook resigned as top editor of The Baltimore Sun to accept a job as a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, his alma mater, he has been forced to resign from the new position for sending sexually explicit G-chat messages to a student. According to a report on the UNC journalism school's news website, it is the second time in Cook's short tenure there that he has been accused of engaging in appropriate chats, although the identity of the woman in the first incident has not been confirmed.

Cook, who is married and has two children, spent a rocky 15 months at The Sun, overseeing massive staff reductions and making a negative impression on many staffers.

[photo via]

New York Times Unloads on Sun Bosses at Tribune Co.

Evan Serpick — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:28:10 +0000

Anyone who cares about The Baltimore Sun must read the shocking story on the front page of today's New York Times, "At Sam Zell's Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture".

In it, superb Times media reporter David Carr uses more than 20 sources, many inside the Tribune Company, to detail the sexist, incompetent, and callous leadership of the media conglomerate, which owns The Sun, as well as The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Orlando Sentinel, and The Hartford Courant.

The story, which lists The Sun as one of "the most important newspapers in the country," opens with a jaw-dropping story about Randy Michaels, the former shock jock and radio executive with no newspaper experience that Sam Zell appointed CEO of Tribune Company soon after he bought it in 2007. It describes how Michaels, at a lunch meeting with other top executives at Tribune offered a waitress $100 to show him her breasts. Unfortunately, this is only one of a series of stories detailing how Zell, Michaels, and the cronies they brought in from their years in the radio business brought a boorish and despicable attitude to the storied Tribune Company and its properties.

Beyond its tawdry behavior, the leadership displayed complete ignorance of the newspaper industry, using various ostensible redesigns and innovations at its properties as covers for cost-cutting:

James Warren, the former managing editor and Washington bureau chief of The Chicago Tribune, said: “They wheeled around here doing what they wished, showing a clear contempt for most everyone that was here and used power just because they had it. They used the notion of reinventing the newspapers simply as a cover for cost-cutting.

Those sentiments echo those we reported in our 2009 cover story about The Sun, in which one laid-off staffer referred to "the wacko guys in Chicago," who had tons of terrible ideas to save money, but "none of them are journalism-based."

Worse, even as the company shed 4,200 jobs as cost-cutting measures, the top executives who were ruinng the company took home millions in performance-based bonuses:

Despite the company’s problems, the managers have been rewarded handsomely. From May 2009 to February 2010, a total of $57.3 million in bonuses were paid to the current management with the approval of the judge overseeing the bankruptcy. In 2009, the top 10 managers received $5.9 million at a time when cash flow was plummeting.

The whole story, even at about 4,000 words, is worth reading. The hard-working people putting out the paper under these conditions deserve better. Baltimore deserves better.

WYPR to Launch Transportation Series

Evan Serpick — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:47:06 +0000

Local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate WYPR (88.1 FM) will launch a news series on transporatation in the Baltimore region that will, to quote a press release "address challenges and opportunities from MARC to better roads, bus lines to funding and will also highlight areas of contention, debate, progress and partnership." The series will be funded by a $30,000 grant from the Goldseker Foundation.

The new series, expected to launch some time next month, comes on the heels of the WYPR news department's excellent 2009 series on at-risk youth, "Growing Up Baltimore," which earned a Best of Baltimore award for "Best News Series."

Transportation has been a hot topic in Baltimore in recent years, as a chorus of experts seem to agree that the lack of a comprehensive transportation system is holding the city back. Although the press release fails to mention it specifically, the series will likely discuss the "Red Line," the controversial proposed rail line to run east-west through Baltimore City. Also, I hope it will address whether or not the free Charm City Circulator is having much of an impact. There will plenty of time to get to these and other issues: The series is expected to last through April, 2011.

“We hope this series will make a strong case, especially to elected officials and civic leaders, of how important an efficient transportation network is to creating and sustaining a more competitive Baltimore region," Dr. Timothy Armbruster, the Goldseker Foundation’s President, said in the release.

City Paper Loses Suit, Owes $350K—Not a Problem, Says Publisher

Evan Serpick — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:23:00 +0000

City Paper yesterday lost a defamation suit brought by a Miami restauranter who CP's Van Smith incorrectly identified in a 2008 story as a federal fugitive (Press Check detailed the case earlier this week). The alternative weekly has been ordered to pay defendant Ionnas Kafouros $350,000 for defamation and actiing with negligence. They did not find that Smith or CP acted with malice, and so the defendent is not entitled to punitive damages.

Press Check got in touch with City Paper publisher Don Farley this afternoon and asked if the the $350,000 judgement would affect the alt-weekly's survival or ability to continure publishing, he said, flatly, "No."

"The outcome was certainly disappointing," said Farley. "When you're dealing with a jury and what a jury believes, as far as money, that's where we ended up."

Farley added that he and City Paper's lawyers haven't decided whether or not they will appeal the decision. He also declined to say whether or not the alt-weekly, which is owned by Scranton, Penn.-based Time-Shamrock Communications, had insurance that would cover the damages.

City Paper Goes to Court

Evan Serpick — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:37:29 +0000

City Paper senior staff writer Van Smith appeared in U.S. District Court yesterday to testify in a defamation case brought against the alt-weekly by Miami restauranteur Ioannis Kafouros, whom Smith mistakenly identified as a federal fugitive of the same name in an August 2008 City Paper story. The Daily Record has the whole story (subscription only).

"City Paper didn't do its job," said Joshua Treem, an attorney for Kafouros in an opening statement. Kafouros claims the story has put his life in danger, forcing him to increase security for himself and his family, and is asking for $1 million in damages.

The midtaken identity came in a story about the August, 2008 raid of six Baltimore properties associated with Milton Tillman Jr., a convicted felon facing federal tax charges. Iannnis "Crazy John" Kafouros, who owned one of the properties, was thought to have skipped town a decade ago to avoid theft charges. Van Smith sought to locate Crazy John and a Google search turned up a Iannis Kafouros in Miami. Smith doubted that a man on the run from the law would have such a public life, but he called Mykonos, the Greek resturant that Kafouros was associated with and reached his son, Alexios. In his story, Smith claimed that the son confirmed that "his father is the same Ionnis Kafouris as the one from Baltimore, and [that] his mother, Diane Kafouris, lives in Baltimore."

"I thought it was extrememly odd, but Alex had said what he had said," Smith testified in court yesterday.

Alexios hasn't testified yet, but the Kafouris family claim he never confirmed the false information. The family's attorneys pointed out that Smith never called the restaurant back or contacted lawyers in the case against Crazy John. "You don't get to break the rules when you're breaking news," said Joel S. Magolnick, another lawyer for the family, and Smith agreed.

Among the lessons for journalists here: Google and other search engines are great investigative tools, but information found there needs to be confirmed by multiple sources—especially in so sensitive a case as this. Also, as I was once told by a great journalist, if a scoop seems too good to be true, it probably is. And finally, any case with a main character called "Crazy John" might be better off left alone.

The trial is expected to last the rest of the week.

Baltimore Media Shine in Hopkins Coverage

Evan Serpick — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:53:42 +0000

The eyes of the world were on Baltimore yesterday, during the tense armed standoff at Johns Hopkins Hospital that left the gunman and his mother dead and one doctor wounded. And our local media, particularly Sun staffer Justin Fenton and the staff at WBAL, shined.

Less than an hour after Paul Warren Pardus shot Dr. David B. Cohen, apparently in frustration over his mother's condition, both Fenton and WBAL's Jennifer Franciotti and Dave Collins were on the scene. Fenton was a tweet machine, passing along crucial information as it came to him, whether through official sources, his own observations, or overheard chatter on police scanners and conversations. His dozens of tweets in the hours after the shooting providing the most accurate real-time account of what was happening. Fenton was interviewed on CNN fairly early in the ordeal and became the outlet's best source for accurate info.

As The Sun's Dave Zurawik details today on his excellent blog, Z on TV, WBAL really shined among local outlets, with Franciotti breaking news of the gunman's death before police announced it. And CNN, apparently because of its affiliation with WBAL and WMAR provided excellent footage and national coverage.

During a dark and disturbing day in Baltimore, it was great to see our local media on top of the situation.

[photo: Justin Fenton for The Sun]

Sun Magazine Debuts

Evan Serpick — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:45:11 +0000

The Sun re-launched its Sunday magazine as promised, left. I'm curious to hear what readers thought of it.

It opens with a one-page rundown of Fall events, and follows with four features. The first is a four-page photo spread on Fall fashion, the next an "At Home With" piece on Sally Thorner, detailing the decor of her homes in Baltimore County and New York City. "Generation Rx" features mini-profiles of 10 local doctors under 40, while in "Thoroughly Modern Julie," Best Columnist Jean Marbella profiled Ruxton native Julie Bowen, star of "Modern Family."

To me, it seems like a fairly lightweight affair, particularly when compared to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, or even the old Baltimore Sun Magazine, which ceased publication in 1996. The material feels even more slight when one considers that this is a quarterly. The product presented here is supposed to represent three months of work. Instead, it looks and reads like a quick sideline job for the six-member editorial staff, which is undoubtedly already quite busy with its work putting out a daily newspaper. One might hope that over the next three months, they'll have time to put together a more solid product, with at least one or two pieces with some heft. Sun editors have mentioned that they hope to make the magazine a weekly product again. Based on this quarterly effort, it's hard to imagine what kind of product they would be able to produce on a weekly basis.