Credit: Gina Argentina

Considering how the New York Times is coping with the the plight of the publishing industry and news media better than most, it’s not surprising to see that they might be pursuing a more symbiotic editorial model. Granted, when it comes to weathering the storm, the NYT is a lot larger in both scope and scale (size, authority, and audience) than many of its contemporaries, so it has a definite edge. But its continual efforts to reinvent its content model are plain.

In addition to everything it’s done with blogs and Times Wire (a real time news feed), it seems to be pursuing all three facets of a symbiotic editorial model. Most recently, not only has it started thinking of its readers as users, but it’s implemented a diversified ad-revenue model to go with it. As Adage reports:

[...] Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at The New York Times, said the company has quit calling online readers “readers,” instead referring to them as users. [...]

“When we think traditionally about creation [at The New York Times] it was limited to people within the Times,” [said Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at NYT]. “We created for readers … [for whom] it was a passive experience. But as we moved online, we wanted to move people from readers to users.”

This shift to users-instead-of-readers is an important part of the transition toward becoming a social news organization. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of an equally auhtoritative newspaper, The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

But more importantly, the NYT’s shift toward users-instead-of-readers is also seen in its integration of apps and what those apps might mean for its revenues. Overall, it looks to be evolving into a veritable social news organization. As the AdAge article elaborates, to coax people from being readers to being users:

[...] the company has opened up its [APIs]. The Times has taken content and data — both internally created material, such as movie reviews and best-seller lists, and external data, such as campaign-finance and legislative information — and opened up the APIs so that outside developers can create tools for its consumers.

Among the results: Instantwatcher mashes up the “Watch Instantly” program from online movie-rental service Netflix with Times movie critics’ top choices. Another app, called NYTExplorer, provides an alternative article-search function to the one that exists on NYTimes.com.

These apps demonstrate how the NYT is diversifying their ad-revenue model. The “Watch Instantly” app, for instance, seems a lot like an affiliate marketing tactic — i.e. a performance-based referral marketing model.

Purusing this kind of ad-revenue diversification and the technology to implement it is 2/3 of the symbiotic editorial equation. The reaming third is integrating a full-sevice marketing agency into your organization (as Vice Magazine has), and as the Nieman Journalism Lab recently documented, the NYT has an advertising R&D lab that seems poised to evolve into just such a full-sevice marketing agency.

Credit: OliverAlex

First, a publication provides two products: content and a medium. The content is for your readers/consumers/users, and the medium is for advertisers looking to reach them.

Your editorial becomes symbiotic when you cross-sell those two products, and you do that by strategically develop content items that complement the offers of advertisers that you proactively scouted. But it’s not about churning out biased content that will help advertisers sell their products. Rather, it’s about having an editorial format, knowing your readers demographics, and understanding what kind of consumers they also happen to be. So a big part of it is making sure that your advertisers actually have product offers that appeal to your readers’ consumer interests.

This, of course, raises the question of how you figure that out. It’s one thing to replace your ad-sales department with a fully integrated marketing agency, like Vice Magazine does, but it’s quite another to analyze your readers in a non-intrusive, non-obstructive way. And that’s where understanding them as users comes in.

Credit: Alex Glickman

But then there’s the technology side to treating your readers as users. Basically, if you’re going to provider your readers with the content that they each find most relevant, you’re going to have to collect data on them. And you do that by becoming a social news organization (or just plain-ol’ social content organization).

By leveraging popular APIs so that your readers can seamlessly aggregate, syndicate, and share your content, you achieve so much more than just increasing page views. You also gain insight into their behavior as users and consumers. Integrated with personal profiles/logins within your portal, this allows you target them with the most relevant content.

More importantly, it allows you to target them with offers that actually appeal to them. And when you do that, you not only increase conversions and value of your ad-space; you also build trust with your readers by demonstrating that you understand and appreciate their interests (as consumers and users). In a word, you use your users to target advertisers.

Of course, doing so effectively require that you (1) have a fully integrated marketing agency in-house (like Vice Magazine) that can (2) help you understand your users, (3) collaborate with your editorial to develop symbiotic content, (4) scout appropriate advertisers, and (5) diversify your ad-revenue stream so that you’re not relying on a single, limited model that might coax you into compromising user-experience. In other words, your in-house marketing agency has to market your editorial product first, and your advertisers second.

Credit: Shadowgate

When Tom Foremski (a former Financial Times journalist) had some ideas on how newspapers can reinvent themselves, he was trying to address both falling subscriptions and declining ad revenues. He suggested that newspapers needed original content worth paying subscription fees for, and should develop a hyper-local focus to get that content:

Newspapers should own their local stories. For example, San Jose Mercury or the San Francisco Chronicle should “own” Silicon Valley stories. They should be breaking all the best Google stories, Oracle, Apple, etc. That would be something people would pay for.

Well, assuming that a newspaper is successful at owning their local beats, they still need to adapt their subscription and ad models to new media. Basically, if a newspaper can own its local beat, it has an opportunity to completely reinvent itself through better targeted ads, social media, and mobile engagement.

Hyper Targeted Ads

As a paying subscriber, a newspaper knows a lot more than my IP. They know my billing address, which means that they can show me ads for businesses in my own neighborhood.

This, in turn, means they can open up a variety of speciality ad rates that will make it affordable for a mom & pop to advertise “in the paper.” They know exactly how many people in that neighborhood subscribe to the paper, what content they interact with the most, and can target them accordingly.

Social Media & Added Value Subscriptions

The first thing that newspapers need to do is build community around their paying subscribers. This means the usual sweet of social media features such as user profile, opening comments, etc. This can help to both increase reader loyalty and page views which means more ad revenue.

Basically, as readers interact, debate, and “share” stories that interest them, page views rise and so do impressions. As a logged-in subscriber, then, I should be able to easily tweet and digg stories with a single click.

Going Mobile

If, as Foremski points out, papers are already thinking in terms “mobile journalists equipped with notebooks, cell phone modems, and cameras,” then the next step is thinking in terms of mobile subscribers — not mobile readers, but mobile subscribers.

First, by sending readers mobile alerts on topics they want, papers wouldn’t only be increasing engagement and offering more value on subscription fees, but they’d also be boosting impressions. As mobile readers click through on an SMS to view the story, papers further increase page views, and therefore impressions.

In fact, if their social media feature leverage the Twitter API, they might even consider using Twitter as an SMS service provider.

And to build on the idea of hyper targeted ads, they could also use location based services technology to show mobile subscribers ads that are relevant to their current location. Imagine a mom & pop restaurant reaching out to a mobile user who is not from that neighborhood, but happens to be in it.

The Watchdog Business

Newspapers are more than just content publishers. They serve an integral role in a healthy democracy, so there is more hinging on their survival than mere jobs and tradition.

What newspapers have to realize is that an edition printed on paper is not an integral part of their business model. Rather, their in the business of (1) providing authoritative information so that they can (2) sell subscriptions and ads. Web technologies enable them to disseminate said authoritative information, so they simply need to adapt their subscriptions and ad models to these new media.