Ad Age asked some designers to rethink the NYTimes, but what resulted was a dialogue on newspaper products and how they need to evolve. Some highlights:
Pelle Anderson: “The newspapers of the world, and that includes the New York Times, will have to realize that they compete not in a newspapers market, nor in a media market, but in a time market. The core business idea of any newspaper (although the publishers and editors tend to avoid admitting to this) is to deliver a number of readers to the advertisers, or, more precisely, a certain exposure of the ads to a specific audience. The time the readers spend with the papers is the currency the newspapers sell to advertisers, and that time has been steadily diminishing since the ’60s. What to do? To just go on producing what to a large extent is an increasingly irrelevant newspaper, like the New York Times does, is not a good idea.”
Lucie Lacavaa: ” The newspaper of the future will have options for single urban people just as it will have options for families. The same consumer who is getting used to having convenient on-demand options in all their other media and entertainment is also a newspaper reader, so you have to design newspapers to be bought a la carte.”