Editorial operations at NYTD and their potential impact on the New York Times
brand continued to be an area of concern. Over several decades, the newspaper
industry had adopted the separation of editorial operations and business operations as a sacred principle. In practice, organizations that respected the separation in its strictest sense forbade
communication between newsroom employees and the rest of the organization.
NYTD was initially formed with a respect for that principle. However, as NYTD gained experience, the principle increasingly was called into question. Some of the more innovative and successful additions to NYTD’s website
were coming from cross-functional collaboration between journalists, marketers, sales staff, and technology staff.
DealBook was one example, but there were others, including a new real estate feature that was under development, and a collaboration with New Line Cinemas to promote the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy by creating an integrated online packaging of advertisements, movie reviews, and historical content about J.R.R. Tolkien and his books.