Inside one newspaper's transformation

There is a great feature in the current New York Magazine that takes us inside how the New York Times has been tackling what so many newspapers are struggling with right now -- how to embrace the Web. Emily Nussbaum profiles the "Interactive Newsroom Technologies" team, the 10-person group responsible for carrying out an integration between the print and online operations of the paper, particularly on the editorial side.

From my position here leading our social media practice, I've noticed the interactive elements the Times has been adding in the last year and have been impressed. One of the opening graphs sums up what they've been doing very well:

And yet, even as the financial pages wrote the paper’s obit, deep within that fancy Renzo Piano palace across from the Port Authority, something hopeful has been going on: a kind of evolution. Each day, peculiar wings and gills poke up on the Times’ website—video, audio, “drillable” graphics. Beneath Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed column, there’s a link to his blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube videos. Coverage of Gaza features a time line linking to earlier reporting, video coverage, and an encyclopedic entry on Hamas. Throughout the election, glittering interactive maps let readers plumb voting results. There were 360-degree panoramas of the Democratic convention; audio “back story” with reporters like Adam Nagourney; searchable video of the debates. It was a radical reinvention of the Times voice, shattering the omniscient God-tones in which the paper had always grounded its coverage; the new features tugged the reader closer through comments and interactivity, rendering the relationship between reporter and audience more intimate, immediate, exposed.

You'd think from reading the article that the New York Times is having a successful transformation.  You'd be surprised reading the articles of late that some are predicting that the paper would fold this year. That is, until, you get to the very last sentence where one of the members of the team states how this evolution will make it a better media outlet...if "there's a business model when we get there."

In the meantime, the good news is that companies are not as reliant on newspapers like the New York Times to reach their audiences. The new world of communications affords us a great opportunity to be self-publishers. But that needs to be done as part of a well thought-out social media program. I'm pulling for the New York Times and others to make it, but isn't about time to start hedging your bets?