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. The principle developed because in the industry’s early years, many
unscrupulous owners would do anything necessary to sell their product. Over time,
readers lost trust. NYTD executive vice president Lincoln Millstein described how the
industry survived:
After all those years, publishers developed organizations that really
respected the singular function of the different departments…they were
very careful and constructed the organization to respect editorial
independence. As a result, I think newspapers in general have
developed deep silos. I used to be in the newsroom and I’m quite
aware of those silos.
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. Mr. Meyer commented:
So much of our success has relied on quickly building a world class IT
infrastructure for online media. Taking advantage of it requires
collaboration. The success of new products depends on using
technology to create a better user and advertiser experience, not just
text and pictures.
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advertisements, movie reviews, and historical content about J.R.R. Tolkien and his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.