In the third quarter of , our digital subscriptions grew at the fastest pace since the launch of the pay model in — and growth then exceeded that pace during the fourth quarter, in a postelection surge. We now have more than 1. We also have more than one million print subscriptions, and our readers are receiving a product better than it has ever been, with rich new standalone sections. Yet to continue succeeding — to continue providing journalism that stands apart and to create an ever-more-appealing destination — we need to change.
Indeed, we need to change even more rapidly than we have been changing. Why must we change? Because our ambitions are grand: to prove that there is a digital model for original, time-consuming, boots-on-the-ground, expert reporting that the world needs. For all the progress we have made, we still have not built a digital business large enough on its own to support a newsroom that can fulfill our ambitions.
To secure our future, we need to expand substantially our number of subscribers by To do nothing, or to be timid in imagining the future, would mean being left behind. Our focus on subscribers stems from a challenge confronting us: the weakness in the markets for print advertising and traditional forms of digital-display advertising. But by focusing on subscribers, The Times will also maintain a stronger advertising business than many other publications. Advertisers crave engagement: readers who linger on content and who return repeatedly.
Thanks to the strength and innovation of our journalism — not just major investigative work and dispatches from around the world but also interactive graphics, virtual reality and Emmy-winning videos that redefine storytelling — The Times attracts an audience that advertisers want to reach.
The center of this strategy is increasing our digital subscriptions. Doing so requires our news report and newsroom to move past many habits that are holding us back. These realities led to the creation of the group.
Our seven members have spent the past year working closely with newsroom leaders; conducting hundreds of conversations with Times journalists and with outsiders; studying reader behavior and focus groups; and conducting a written survey of the newsroom. An appendix contains excerpts from the survey responses. Our group is the heir to the Innovation Committee, whose report and related work changed the culture of the newsroom.
But has been different from the Innovation Committee in two important respects. First, we have had the benefit of working closely with Times leadership over the past year to begin implementing changes. As a result, this report is not intended to be the detailed guide for change that the Innovation Report was. Many of the changes we advocate are already well underway.
The details will continue to come from Dean, Joe and the rest of the leadership. This report is instead a statement of principles, priorities and goals — a guide to help members of the newsroom understand more fully the direction that The Times is moving and to play an even bigger role in making that change happen.
We have not yet created a news report that takes full advantage of all the storytelling tools at our disposal and, in the process, does the best possible job of speaking to our potential audience.
More of our journalism needs to match what a large and growing number of curious and sophisticated readers have told us they value most — distinctive journalism, in a comfortable form, that expands their understanding of the world and helps them navigate it. Our work too often instead reflects conventions built up over many decades, when we spoke to our readers once a day, when we cultivated an aura of detachment from them and when by far our most powerful tool was the written word.
To keep our current readers and attract new ones we must more often apply Times values to the new forms of journalism now available to us. For The Times to become an even more attractive destination to readers — and to maintain and strengthen its position in the years ahead — three broad areas of change are necessary. Our report must change. Our staff must change. And the way we work must change. The Times publishes about pieces of journalism every day.
This number typically includes some of the best work published anywhere. It also includes too many stories that lack significant impact or audience — that do not help make The Times a valuable destination.
What kinds of stories? Incremental news stories that are little different from what can be found in the freely available competition. Features and columns with little urgency. Stories written in a dense, institutional language that fails to clarify important subjects and feels alien to younger readers. A long string of text, when a photograph, video or chart would be more eloquent.
We devote a large amount of resources to stories that relatively few people read. Except in some mission-driven areas or in areas where evidence suggests that the articles have disproportionate value to subscribers, there is little justification for this.
It wastes time — of reporters, backfielders, copy editors, photo editors and others — and dilutes our report. They frequently do not clear the bar of journalism worth paying for, because similar versions are available free elsewhere.
Our journalism must change to match, and anticipate, the habits, needs and desires of our readers, present and future. We need a report that even more people consider an indispensable destination, worthy of their time every day and of their subscription dollars. The Times has an unparalleled reputation for excellence in visual journalism. We have defined multimedia storytelling for the news industry and established ourselves as the clear leader. Yet despite our excellence, not enough of our report uses digital storytelling tools that allow for richer and more engaging journalism.
Too much of our daily report remains dominated by long strings of text. An example of the problem: When we ran a story in about the roiling debate over subway routes in New York, a reader mocked us in the comments for not including a simple map of the train line at the heart of the debate. Similarly, when we write about dance or art, our reporters and critics are able to include video or photography but only in a limited way; they lack the proper training to embed visuals contextually, and our content management system, Scoop, makes the placement of visuals an afterthought.
The advent of Oak, our new story creation tool in Scoop, is encouraging because it is designed to address these problems. The same issues apply to our critics writing reviews on other topics, our sports reporters writing about well-executed plays and our foreign correspondents trying to convey a sense of place.
Reporters, editors and critics are eager to make progress here, and we need to train and empower them. We also need to become more comfortable with our photographers, videographers and graphics editors playing the primary role covering some stories, rather than a secondary role. The excellent journalism already being produced by these desks serves as a model.
Given our established excellence in this area, creating a more visual daily report is an enormous opportunity. The daily briefings are among the most successful products that The Times has launched in recent years.
They have a big, loyal audience, among both Times subscribers and nonsubscribers. They also largely build on journalistic investments The Times has already made. We have dozens of regularly appearing features built for the print edition but not enough for a digital ecosystem. We need more journalistic forms that make The Times a habit by frequently enlightening readers on major running stories, through email newsletters, alerts, FAQs, scoreboards, audio, video and forms yet to be invented.
Our journalists comfortably use this style on social media, television and radio, and it is consistent with the lingua franca of the Internet. In our own report, however, we still do not use this more approachable writing style often enough, and, when we do, we too often equate it with the first-person voice.
The Times has rightly become more comfortable with the first person, but clear, conversational writing does not depend on it. One major problem is the bottlenecks that limit our ability to launch new features, even when the tools already exist. To be clear, The Times is making progress in employing a richer, more digital mix of journalistic forms. The progress in audio, video and virtual reality are obvious examples. But the overall pace should accelerate, and more of our journalists should participate in the creative and production process.
The value of The New York Times does not depend on conveying information in the forms that made the most sense for a print newspaper or for desktop computers. Our largely print-centric strategy, while highly successful, has kept us from building a sufficiently successful digital presence and attracting new audiences for our features content.
At the same time, we should make a small number of big digital bets on areas where The Times has a competitive opportunity, the way we did with Cooking and Watching.
The driving force behind these sections, such as Living and Home, was a desire to attract advertising. The main attractions for readers were our ability to delight and to offer useful advice about what to cook, what to wear and what to do. The strategy succeeded brilliantly. Today, we need a new strategy, both for traditional features meant to delight and inform and for guidance meant to be useful in tangible ways. Our approach has kept us from building as large a digital presence as the Times brand and journalistic quality make possible, and kept us from making our print sections as imaginative, modern and relevant for readers as they could possibly be.
To be blunt, we have not yet been as ambitious or innovative as our predecessors were in the s. Our readers are hungry for advice from The Times.
It is possible — probable, in the view of — that The Times will not be able to meet them simply by getting better at what we already do. In all likelihood, we will need a modern version of the s features expansion: devoting newsroom resources to new areas, primarily to attract subscribers and engage new readers which in turn will attract advertisers.
There would be nothing wrong or new about doing so. The success of the s features strategy helped The Times afford great investigative journalism and foreign correspondents stationed around the world.
The s features sections also produced troves of wonderful journalism on their own. We expect that the bigger opportunities are in providing guidance rather than traditional features. We can help people curate the culture at a moment when the culture, from television and movies to fashion and style, is changing.
As we expand service, however, we should not forget traditional features. We should continue producing trend pieces, profiles, essays and other journalism that provides us a foundation of authority and are essential to our most loyal readers. Perhaps nothing builds reader loyalty as much as engagement — the feeling of being part of a community. And the readers of The New York Times are very much a community.
They want to talk with each other and learn from each other, not only about food, books, travel, technology and crossword puzzles but about politics and foreign affairs, too. We know from research and anecdotes that readers value the limited opportunities we provide to engage in discussion. Asking readers to invest their time on our platform creates a natural cycle of loyalty. Network effects are the growth engine of every successful startup, Facebook being the prime example.
That must change. The Times employs the finest staff of journalists in the world and remains the employer of choice for many top journalists. Much about our newsroom staff must remain unchanged.
We should continue to employ a healthy mix of newshounds, wordsmiths and analysts. We should continue to place rigorous editing at the heart of our journalism. We should continue to give journalists the time and resources to pursue work that has real impact. But we also must change our staff, and not primarily for budget reasons. We must align the skills of our journalists with the demands of our journalistic ambitions. We need a staff that makes The Times even more of a reader destination than it is today, able to attract a larger paying audience and able to become an even more influential source of news and information.
They understand that Times journalism has already changed and will need to change even more. They want to play a bigger role in making that change happen.
To do so, they need new kinds of knowledge, so that they are able to create digitally native journalism that meets Times standards of excellence. Our newsroom training efforts have improved markedly over the past year, but they need to expand further. Training will allow them to combine their expertise and knowledge with the powerful new storytelling tools at our disposal.
We do not now have the right mix of skills in the newsroom to carry out the ambitious plan for change. A few areas are especially important: visual journalists; reporters who have both unmatched beat authority and strong writing skills; and backfield editors with expertise in sharpening ideas and shaping more analytical, conversational stories.
As the paper moves further into these new fields, its direct competitors and clients or potential clients will undoubtedly grow in number. A staff member who has any doubt about the status of a particular program should consult the standards editor or the deputy editorial page editor.
Appearances might create a conflict of interest if they come so regularly that they interfere with Times assignments or compromise the integrity or independence of The Times. They might also create a conflict if they identify a staff member as closely with a radio or television program or a website as with The Times. A Washington reporter who appeared weekly on a television program might soon become more known for that program than for work done for The Times. Occasional appearances on the same program would not run that risk.
In a day when most families balance two careers, the legitimate activities of companions, spouses and other relatives can sometimes create journalistic conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts. They can crop up in civic or political life, professional pursuits and financial activity.
A spouse or companion who runs for public office would obviously create the appearance of conflict for a political reporter or an editor involved in election coverage. A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor.
To avoid such conflicts, staff members may not write about people to whom they are related by blood or marriage or with whom they have close personal relationships, or edit material about such people or make news judgments about them. For similar reasons, staff members should not recruit or directly supervise family members or close friends. Some exceptions are permissible — in a foreign bureau, for instance, where a married couple form a team, or in the case of an article by a food writer profiling her brother the Yankee star, where the kinship is of genuine news interest.
Staff members must be sensitive to these possibilities. In some cases, disclosure is enough. But if The Times considers the problem serious, the staff member may have to withdraw from certain coverage. Sometimes an assignment may have to be modified or a beat changed. In a few instances, a staff member may have to move to a different department — from business and financial news, say, to the culture desk — to avoid the appearance of conflict.
Although this policy necessarily imposes restraints, The Times has no wish to intrude upon the private lives of its staff members and their families. Nothing in this document seeks to prohibit a companion, spouse or other relative of a Times staff member from taking part in any political, financial, commercial, religious or civic activity.
The Times understands that friends and relatives of its staff have every right to pursue full and active lives, personally and professionally. If restrictions are necessary, they fall on the Times employee. In all cases The Times depends on staff members to disclose potential problems in a timely fashion so that we can work together to prevent embarrassment for staff members and The Times. Every member of the Times staff must be constantly vigilant against any appearance that he or she is abusing nonpublic information for financial gain.
That imperative applies to all departments. Though staff members must necessarily accept certain limits on their freedom to invest, this policy leaves a broad range of investments open to them.
Any staff member, regardless of assignment, is free to own diversified mutual funds, money market funds and other diversified investments that the reporter or editor cannot control.
Any member also may own treasury bills, investment-grade municipal bonds, debt securities other than speculative bonds, and securities issued by the New York Times Company.
And staff members are of course free to own stocks entirely unrelated to their Times assignment. No staff member may own stock or have any other financial interest in a company, enterprise or industry that figures or is likely to figure in coverage that he or she provides, edits, packages or supervises regularly.
A book editor, for example, may not invest in a publishing house, a health writer in a pharmaceutical company or a Pentagon reporter in a mutual fund specializing in defense stocks. For this purpose an industry is defined broadly; for example, a reporter responsible for any segment of media coverage may not own any media stock. Staff members may not buy or sell securities or make other investments in anticipation of forthcoming articles that originate with The Times.
In general, staff members must refrain from acting on such information before noon Eastern time the day of print publication.
This restriction does not apply to spot news that first appears on wire services or that originates elsewhere. That information is public. Staff members in any department will be asked when hired to affirm that they have no investments that would violate the rules above with respect to the assignment they are being given.
If a new staff member is unable to make this affirmation, the staff member may choose to sell the conflicting holding. If not, he or she must be given a different assignment where no such conflict exists. Staff members should be acutely sensitive that the investments and business interests of their spouse, family and companions may create real or apparent conflicts of interest by raising questions of favoritism.
Depending on circumstances, the new staff member may have to recuse himself or herself from certain coverage or accept an alternative assignment unrelated to the holdings in question. The standards editor or the deputy editorial page editor may from time to time ask staff members in any department to affirm that they have no investments in violation of the rules above. Such a request might be expected, for example, when a staff member is about to begin a new assignment or work on a particularly sensitive article.
If and when such conditions come up, the staff member must alert his or her department head and the standards editor. Depending on circumstances, the staff member may have to recuse himself or herself from certain coverage or even to move to a job unrelated to the holdings. If a reporter who owns stock in a company outside his or her regular beat is assigned to write an article about that company or its industry, the reporter must discuss the investment with the assigning editor before beginning the work.
Similarly, editors assigned to major articles or a series about companies or industries in which they have investments must advise their supervisors of potential conflicts before beginning the editing. In many instances it will be perfectly permissible for the work to proceed, but the reporter or editor who works on such an article or series may not buy or sell stock in the company or industry until two weeks after publication.
Staff members in business-financial news regularly work with sensitive information that affects financial prices. Because of that sensitivity, they are subject to additional and stricter requirements. Staff members in technology news and media news are subject to the same rules as those in business-financial news, for the same reason. Members of these three departments may not play the market. That is, they may not conduct in-and-out trading buying and selling the same security within three months.
They may not buy or sell options or futures or sell securities short. Any of these actions could create the appearance that a staff member was speculating by exploiting information not available to the public. In special circumstances — a family financial crisis, for example — the associate managing editor for news administration may waive the three-month holding period. Supervising editors in business-financial, technology or media news should be especially cautious in investing because they may reasonably expect to become involved in the coverage of virtually any company at any time.
Their counterparts in other departments should be equally sensitive to possible conflicts in supervising coverage of companies in their domain.
Because of the sensitivity of their assignments, some business financial staff members may not own stock in any company other than the New York Times Company. These include the Market Place writer, other market columnists, the regular writer of the daily stock market column, reporters regularly assigned to mergers and acquisitions, the daily markets editor, the Sunday investing editor, the Sunday Business editor, the business and financial editor and his or her deputies.
Masthead editors and other editors who play a principal part in deciding the display of business and financial news, including its display on Page 1, may not own stock in any company other than the New York Times Company. The editorial page editor, the deputy editorial page editor and the Op-Ed editor may not own stock in any company other than the New York Times Company.
Nor may editorial writers and Op-Ed columnists regularly assigned to write about business, finance or economics. A staff member who owns stock and moves into an assignment where such holdings are not permitted must sell the stock. Those who are newly barred from owning stock of any sort for example, on being promoted to deputy business and financial editor may dispose of their shares in phases, following a reasonable plan worked out with the associate managing editor for news administration.
But the phase-out does not apply to reporters or editors who own shares in specific industries they are newly assigned to cover. For instance, it is manifestly untenable for a new Automobiles editor to own stock in an auto company, so divestiture must be prompt.
Whenever this document requires the sale of stock holdings, a staff member can satisfy the requirement by putting the shares into a blind trust or into an equivalent financial arrangement that meets the same goal: preventing an individual from knowing at any given time the specific holdings in the account and blocking the individual from controlling the timing of transactions in such holdings.
If The Times assigns a staff member to a new job where mandatory divestiture would impose an undue hardship, The Times will reimburse the staff member for the reasonable costs of setting up a blind trust.
To avoid an appearance of conflict, certain editors must annually affirm to the chief financial officer of The Times Company that they have no financial holdings in violation of the rules above or any other provision of these guidelines.
They include the executive editor, the managing editor, deputy and assistant managing editors, associate managing editors, the business and financial editor, his or her deputies and the Sunday Business editor.
They also include the editorial page editor, the deputy editorial page editor and the Op-Ed editor. To avoid an appearance of bias, no member of the sports department may gamble on any sports event, except for occasional recreational wagering on horse racing or dog racing or jai alai. This exception does not apply to staff members who cover such racing or regularly edit that coverage.
Except for journalists who receive press passes to cover sporting events, members of the sports department may not accept tickets, travel expenses, meals, gifts or any other benefit from teams or promoters. Sports reporters assigned to cover games may not serve as scorers.
Members of the sports department may not take part in voting for the Heisman Trophy, most valuable player and rookie of the year awards, entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame or similar honors. The Times has exceptional influence in such fields as theater, music, art, dance, publishing, fashion and the restaurant industry. We are constantly scrutinized for the slightest whiff of favoritism.
Therefore staff members working in those areas have a special duty to guard against conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict. Reporters, reviewers, critics and their editors in the Book Review, the Times Magazine and the cultural news, media news and styles departments, beyond abiding by the other provisions of this document, may not help others develop, market or promote artistic, literary or other creative endeavors.
They may not suggest agents, publishers, producers or galleries to aspiring authors, playwrights, composers or artists. They may not suggest chefs to restaurant owners or designers to clothing manufacturers. They may not recommend authors, playwrights, composers or other artists to agents, publishers, producers or galleries.
They may not offer suggestions or ideas to people who figure or are likely to figure in coverage they provide, edit, package or supervise. They may not invest in productions that figure or are likely to figure in their coverage.
Food writers and editors may not invest in restaurants. They may not comment, even informally, on works in progress before those works are reviewed. They may not serve on advisory boards, awards juries, study committees or other panels organized by the people they cover or whose coverage they supervise. They may not accept awards from such people. And they may not request extra copies of books, tapes or other materials that are routinely submitted for review. An arts writer or editor who owns art of exhibition quality and thus has a financial stake in the reputation of the artist may inspire questions about the impartiality of his or her critical judgments or editing decisions.
Thus members of the culture staff who collect valuable objects in the visual arts paintings, photographs, sculpture, crafts and the like must annually submit a list of their acquisitions and sales to the associate managing editor for news administration. The Times recognizes that members of its talented staff write books, operas and plays; create sculpture, and give recitals. It further recognizes that such projects require commercial arrangements to come to fruition.
A writer requires a publisher, a playwright a production company. Nevertheless those commercial ties can be a breeding ground for favoritism, actual or perceived. Staff members who enter into such arrangements must disclose them to their supervisors, who may require them to withdraw from coverage of the parties involved.
Staff members who have a publisher or a movie contract, for example, must be exceedingly sensitive to any appearance of bias in covering other publishers or studios. Those with any doubts about a proposed arrangement should consult the standards editor or the deputy editorial page editor. Beyond honoring all the other provisions of this document, Times photographers, picture editors, art directors, lab personnel and technology editors and reporters may not accept gifts of equipment, programs or materials from manufacturers or vendors.
They may not endorse equipment, programs or materials, or offer advice on product design. This guideline is not meant to restrict The Times from working with vendors to improve its systems or equipment. With the approval of the picture editor, the design director, the technology editor or the Circuits editor, staff members may test equipment or materials on loan from manufacturers or vendors, provided such tests are properly monitored.
The equipment or materials should be returned promptly after testing unless purchased by The Times. Rare exceptions may occur when an equivalent rent is largely hypothetical, as with military vehicles, vintage autos or race cars.
Reviewers should carry out their testing expeditiously and return the vehicle promptly. A reasonable amount of personal use is permissible provided that the use contributes to the review. No writer or editor for the Travel section, whether on assignment or not, may accept free or discounted services of any sort from any element of the travel industry. This includes hotels, resorts, restaurants, tour operators, airlines, railways, cruise lines, rental car companies and tourist attractions.
This prohibition applies to the free trips commonly awarded in raffles at travel industry events. It does not apply, however, to routinely accumulated frequent-flyer points. Travel editors who deal with non-staff contributors have a special obligation to guard against conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict. They must bear in mind that it is our policy not to give Travel assignments to freelance writers who have previously accepted free services.
Depending on circumstances, the Travel editor may make rare exceptions, for example, for a writer who ceased the practice years ago or who has reimbursed his or her host for services previously accepted. It is also our policy not to give Travel assignments to anyone who represents travel suppliers or who works for a government tourist office or as a publicist of any sort. The Travel editor may make rare exceptions, for example, for a writer widely recognized as an expert in a particular culture.
Writers on assignment for Travel must conceal their Times affiliation. The validity of their work depends on their experiencing the same conditions as an ordinary tourist or consumer.
If the Times affiliation becomes known, the writer must discuss with an editor whether the reporting to that point can be salvaged. On rare occasions, the affiliation may be disclosed, for example, when a special permit is required to enter a closed area. No Travel writer may write about any travel service or product offered by a family member or close friend.
Times readers apply exacting standards to the entire paper. They do not distinguish between staff written articles and those written by outsiders. Thus as far as possible, freelance contributors to The Times, while not its employees, will be held to the same standards as staff members when they are on Times assignments, including those for the Times Magazine.
If they violate these guidelines, they will be denied further assignments. Before being given an assignment, freelance contributors must sign a contract with The Times.
These contracts oblige them to take care to avoid conflicts of interests or the appearance of conflict. Specifically, in connection with work for The Times, freelancers will not accept free transportation, free lodging, gifts, junkets, commissions or assignments from current or potential news sources. In addition, they will publish no similar article in a competing publication within 14 days unless The Times approves.
Assigning editors should ensure that contributors are aware of this document and to the greatest extent possible, in fact honor its provisions while on assignment for The Times. Any disagreement over whether a specific provision applies to outside contributors should be resolved before the assignment proceeds.
Assigning editors in business and financial news who deal with non-staff contributors have a special duty to guard against conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict. To the extent possible, assigning editors should ensure that outside contributors meet the strict standards outlined above for the business and financial news staff.
But the gift puts me in an awkward position. The New York Times bars its reporters and editors from accepting anything of value from the people or groups they cover. The paper does not want to risk the perception that it will cover a subject more thoroughly or skew its coverage of controversial subjects because interested parties have expressed appreciation for its efforts.
So I must return your gift with thanks. I hope you understand our position, and I thank you for your thoughtfulness. I appreciate the sentiment behind the award. Your Tracker Settings We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. Your preference will be stored for this browser and device. If you clear your cookies, your preference will be forgotten.
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