There’s been plenty of talk that the NYT plans to drop a “bombshell” story on NYS Gov. David Paterson. Why that term is used, I don’t know. If the governor is corrupt, exposing his wrongdoing is good journalism. (Unless, of course, the actions of other corrupt Albany lawmakers aren’t reported.) We’ll have to stay tuned to see what stories, if any, get published. The Times has a bad habit of searching for something incriminating, coming up short on the reporting, and rushing a thin-soup story into print. (As they did with their McCain and Obama profiles last year. In the Obama piece, the thesis was that Obama exaggerated smoking pot in his book because few people said they’d ever seen him getting stoned.)

From New York Magazine:

The Times hasn’t run anything yet, but we hear they are definitely coming up with something big about the Paterson administration. A spokeswoman had no comment, but regardless, if these rumors continue to gain speed online or even in print, it would seem damage is already being done to Paterson.

The critical point here is that advertising is still what makes money for news, even when there’s a cover charge. Paywalls aren’t just sold to readers. They must be sold to advertisers. Paid walls make the eyeballs behind them much more valuable.

To succeed with paywalls, then, publishers need not only an established monopoly on something valuable (local news, scoops, reporting quality) but also a plan to translate that into advertiser interest. Paywalls alone, unless they are ridiculously expensive, just won’t be enough.

Murdoch* actually has been saying the same thing:

“Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things digital. We’re on the cusp of a digital revolution from which our shareholders will profit handsomely.”

* Disclaimer: I despise Murdoch what stands for: Corporate news with a political swerve to the neo-con right.

The above video aired January 20, 2010.

It features Columbia J-School Dean Bill Grueskin.

From the New York Observer:

Perhaps as an indication that the trepidation of the editorial staff is shared with the business side, last week, while Rick MacArthur was being interviewed by New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford, staffers noticed a senior member of the business staff leaning against Mr. MacArthur’s office, with his ear pressed up against the closed door. Staffers said he was there for nearly a half-hour, and that he was quite evidently eavesdropping. A photo (above) was given to The Observer by a friend of a Harper’s staff member, and Harper’s sources confirmed that this was a photo taken of the business staffer during the Times interview.

Full story is here: http://www.observer.com/2010/media/listening-harpers-meltdown

Go online regularly = pay up.

Have a subscription = Pass Go, but please make sure you recycle.

Read the details here: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/01/new_york_times_set_to_mimic_ws.html

From Gawker:

New York’s Daily Intel broke news of an intriguing, top-secret dinner Jobs convened at Pranna in the Flatiron district. The sometime pescetarian dined with 50 New York Times Company executives in the cellar dining room, and sat with Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, according to Daily Intel. He showed off his new iPad…

Read all about it: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/02/steve_jobs_in_secret_new_york.html

From the NYT website:

R&D is Organized into Three Overlapping Groups:

• Core R&D monitors the changes in enabling technologies and consumer behavior in order to envision and prototype new products and services;
• Emerging Platforms Group operationalizes select prototypes and enables the Company’s business units to rapidly enter onto new platforms including video and mobile; operates the Company’s mobile messaging platform; Emerging Platforms Group is now also working extensively within the “cloud” to assess its operational capabilities at scale;
• Audience development and analytics operates the Company’s multivariate page testing platform for all units; performs custom analyses of audience segments to enable better targeting, and text mining for business intelligence across the units. Using analytical tools, the group has tested different presentations of our content and page layout, which have enabled us to further deepen engagement with our readers and optimize both display and pay-per-click advertising placements.

Fighting in the name of Jesus at Xtreme Ministries (Photo: Fred R. Conrad/NYT)

Jack Shafer of Slate wrote this in a blog post dated Feb. 3:

Once upon a time, rounding up the most egregious examples of bogus trend stories in the U.S. press was a lonely grind. But now, thanks to the editors and reporters of the New York Times—and my industrious readers—locating the silliest examples of journalistic overreach is a simple matter of reading the newspaper of record closely.

He takes aim at a few stories but digs into one that sounded like it had to be a made-up trend: mixed martial arts fights sponsored by evangelical churches, as a recruitment tool.

Fighting in the name of Jesus? This made me want to read the story, and after doing so, I have to disagree with Shafer. There seems to be a trend, crazy as it sounds.

From NYT story:

Mr. Renken’s ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts — a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles — to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low. Mixed martial arts events have drawn millions of television viewers, and one was the top pay-per-view event in 2009.

The Fight Church story is backed up with enough quotes and information to show that it is happening. To what extent? The article doesn’t quantify it because that’s not something parishioners keep on the books, but if an evangelical minister says he’s doing something nutty, best to believe him.

So it makes sense for him to try charging for online content.

The newspapers, in York, Pennsylvania, and Chico, California, will give users free access to as many as 25 “premium” articles monthly, after which they’ll have to pay an undetermined fee unless they subscribe to the print newspapers, said MediaNews President Joseph Lodovic. Premium content may include certain columns and investigative reporting, he said.

“Most of our content will remain free,” Lodovic said yesterday in an e-mail. “Once subscribed, the reader will have access to all premium across MediaNews Group.”

MediaNews, led by Chief Executive Officer Dean Singleton, is adopting a so-called metered pay wall to charge readers, similar to the one in place at the Financial Times and to a plan announced by New York Times Co. MediaNews, the closely held publisher of the Denver Post, may expand the pay wall to more of its 54 U.S. dailies, Lodovic said.

Read the full story here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ayunozwEqBAM