DEMMX: Increasing Video Output is a Priority for New York Times Digital in 2007

Authored by Jay Baage on November 29, 2006 - 2:32pm.

From the DEMMX Conference: Martin N. Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations for The New York Times (NYT), told the audience that getting more videos up on the NYTimes.com is crucial: “Increasing video output on our website is a priority for 2007.”

According to Nisenholtz, there are three key components to NYT’s Internet strategy: Attract users, deepen engagement and increase monetization. Management expects to achieve this editorially by continuing to add more videos, podcasts and blogs and financially by more cross-platform sales training of the advertising sales team.

Another initiative that Nisenholtz mentioned was Topic Pages, which is basically a high quality NYT’s version of Wikipedia. “We just started doing this, but when we’re done we will have tens of thousands of these pages. It’s all about catching the long tail”, says Niselholtz.

Other initiatives he mentioned are better breaking news coverage, expanding interactive graphics and enhanced multimedia coverage. The bottom line is that NYT claims that they no longer are in the print business - they are in the business of journalism, no matter how that journalism is distributed.

“This is one of the most interesting transformations in the history of the New York Times. While we’re still a very traditional business, we’re making same major changes,” says Niselholtz.

Joakim Baage