Althouse: "This is what a several hundred person staff and a massive brand name can do, bitches!"

December 24, 2012

"This is what a several hundred person staff and a massive brand name can do, bitches!"

"This isn’t the future of journalism. It’s a legacy – and still troubled – brand like the New York Times taking off the gloves, no longer pretending it can compete with nimble blogs and throwing one hell of a punch at all of those lean newsrooms around the country."

38 comments:

rhhardin said...: I can't make out if it's supposed to be good or bad.

It looks like stuff for women, to me.

In sentence two, the male reader asks, get to the point.; 12/24/12, 4:26 PM
Sorun said...: Yeah, I left after the first paragraph. Whatever.; 12/24/12, 4:32 PM
pm317 said...: Later, she [Jill Abramson] said everyone she hires is a storyteller first and foremost– even the guys who design charts. It shows.

ROFL.. her most important paying (in intangibles, of course) client for storytelling is Obama. Of course, the wizard chart maker is Nate Silver. LOL, can't stop laughing.

{I didn't click on the NYT link to see what the hoopla was -- didn't want to give that bitch any satisfaction.}; 12/24/12, 4:32 PM
pm317 said...: @rhhardin.. I read the article -- she never got to the point.. I guess we were supposed to respond to her ranting and raving by clicking on the NYT link.; 12/24/12, 4:34 PM
Mumpsimus said...: Nice piece, but it's not clear to me why you'd need hundreds of employees and a big building in Manhattan to produce it.; 12/24/12, 4:36 PM
sonicfrog said...: Layout wise, it is impressive. But are they expecting us to want to read, or, for those of us wading in the blog-pool, produce, a story or narrative on this scale? For most of us bloggers, it's like asking a guy with a 16mm movie camera and no budget to go out there and make a Ken Burns Documentary, or, if the next one is even slicker, The Hobbit!

They don't get it at all. The reason we like blogs is that there isn't all the huge production and links to all sorts of sidebars to the story, we like focusing on the main points without too many distractions. Coincidentally, that is why newspapers worked for so long. You read what you wanted, and skipped what you didn't. Within an instant, you can turn to the comics if the news of the day is not to your liking. The best blogs also work in this manner.

Yes, Snow Fall is an impressive technical piece of work. But i got bored with it very quickly and moved on to something else.; 12/24/12, 4:41 PM
Mumpsimus said...: It's a classic long-form magazine piece, with some graphical bells and whistles. I don't read magazines much anymore, but used to be (maybe still is) you could read something as good or better several times a year in The Atlantic, or Esquire, or Wired.; 12/24/12, 4:50 PM
David-2 said...: So - 11 people, 6 months - and they produce this technically slick story about: some well off young people looking for kicks by betting their life against nature and losing. I guess that's interesting. Well, not really. But maybe those 11 people didn't have the skills to dig into Benghazi for 6 months, or look at the way 0% interest is affecting people and businesses, or something else like that.; 12/24/12, 4:57 PM
Paco Wové said...: It's about an avalanche, apparently.; 12/24/12, 4:59 PM
pm317 said...: @sonicfrog, even technically it is not all that impressive. They still have the same two-dimensional quality to it with some graphics forcibly thrown in. The travel website I used for planning my trip to Zermatt had more impressive material about Swiss Alps.; 12/24/12, 5:06 PM
rhhardin said...: Here's the first sentence of an AP news article from 2006, which evokes the Jesus-get-to-the-point response.

The NYT took it as the wave of the future.; 12/24/12, 5:07 PM
pm317 said...: David-2 said...
-------------
How much did they cost the state and feds to rescue them?; 12/24/12, 5:08 PM
rhhardin said...: In fact here's the article. Google finds all.; 12/24/12, 5:09 PM
Big Mike said...: I followed her link to the article It seems kind of overwritten to me. Sorry.; 12/24/12, 5:09 PM
David-2 said...: BTW, a search for "Stevens Pass Avalanche Air Bag" reveals that a bunch of newsrooms without the NYT resources did manage to cover this avalanche when it happened. Including the New York Times, itself. But though those articles had pictures, maps, and video - including a video interview with the survivor who used air bags - they didn't nice animated graphics of snow falling. That was worth waiting 9 months for! Get yer news, hot!; 12/24/12, 5:10 PM
Astro said...: ... and I heard about this article, and started reading it, via the new media.

So, could ya' boil that down to a few paragraphs for me. I gotta get going.; 12/24/12, 5:13 PM
Badger Pundit said...: I agree with much of the above. All I could tell from the post was that she was writing about something at the link, and I couldn't be sure whether or not she liked it. I did click at the link, and it started up a bunch of media about an avalanche. I clicked off it within a few seconds because her post had made me totally uninterested in whatever it was.

If I wanted to watch something about an avalanche, I'd probably watch "K2" again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2_(film)

http://www.amazon.com/K2-Feature-Michael-Biehn/dp/B007AFBYYY

To the New York Times: good luck competing with Hollywood.; 12/24/12, 5:18 PM
DADvocate said...: Several hundred people? Dang, what did it cost for them to produce this? You need to make a profit.; 12/24/12, 5:22 PM
edutcher said...: Whatever it is, we're reading the future of journalism right now.; 12/24/12, 5:25 PM
Astro said...: Okay - here's a less flip comment.

I scanned through the story and saw it was about a group of thrill seekers who wound up getting a thrill for which they were unprepared, and as a result some people died. In other words, another bunch of candidates for some Darwin Awards.
After reading Jon Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air' I vowed that I'd never again waste my time reading a story about some narcissist who put other people at risk, including (supposed) loved ones, just so the thrill seeker could pursue his/her own dangerous thrill.
Why reward, or glorify, such irresponsibility?; 12/24/12, 5:29 PM
David-2 said...: Astro @ 5:29PM:

+1; 12/24/12, 5:30 PM
ricpic said...: "Ooh, I'm so in awe of Gaia, dude."

"Yeah, it's like, um...heavy, dude."

"Dude."

"Dude."

Such hushed reverence for Gaia. Ooh, it's so important, an avalanche. So serious. God forbid you should laugh at their ecofixation freakout. Typical Times beautiful person/hippy nature worship crapola.; 12/24/12, 5:31 PM
Rabel said...: "I scanned through the story and saw it was about a group of thrill seekers who wound up getting a thrill for which they were unprepared, and as a result some people died."

But, Astro, at least they won't have died in vain if the Times is able to sell their story as an e-book for a profit.; 12/24/12, 5:53 PM
eddie willers said...: "Up next, the dulcet tones of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé."; 12/24/12, 6:11 PM
Michael said...: It is a really well done story, excellent actually. It is not a story for a newspaper but rather a well researched magazine length article with superior graphics and camera footage which was co authored by newspaper people. The cover article that linked to it was silly.; 12/24/12, 6:45 PM
Anonymous said...: Well, there's this gem to help character development:

'A burly man whose five o’clock shadow arrived by noon each day.'

It's like a writing workshop, over there at the Times.

My two cents:

What they really need to do is get their heads out of their asses and stop being such precious snowflakes who've painted themselves into an ideological corner.

I don't want to read your paper if every story is so didactic, like a kindergarten lesson on why I should like gays, hate Wall Street, live in eco-boxes and watch feminist movies.

Seriously, it's time to clean house.

Work the beat, question politics and follow the money. Cover Wall Street, the courts, the genuine injustice in your city and give me the box scores.

If that means playing some cat videos and adapting, so be it.

If if you find a good revenue model. the long form stuff will come. It's a tough world, so I feel for you there.; 12/24/12, 6:59 PM
ALH said...: "If Marco Arment’s The Magazine is a zippy new electricity powered motorbike that bloggers can’t stop raving about, the New York Times just pulled up in Tesla and crushed it."

Using a car company that has a "devastating design problem" as an analogy for the NY Times seems pretty fair.; 12/24/12, 6:59 PM
Anonymous said...: This is a good piece though. It's got the graphics and visuals I like to see. It's well researched, and makes me feel like I know the place.

Good multimedia risk-taking.; 12/24/12, 7:03 PM
Danno said...: The NYT article was a good magazine kind of "read". Too bad they don't do this rather than their slanted rants of leftist political journalism, as they might have a larger readership if they lost the politics.

Being a skier, this might have held my interest more than for most of the Althouse blog readers.; 12/24/12, 7:57 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Sounds like JimJack caused the deaths by going right when he knew, or should have known according to the article, to go left.

Stay left they say numerous times.

Just stay left and you will be okay, okay?; 12/24/12, 8:01 PM
Anonymous said...: R.I.P to Jim Jack, Chris Rudolph, and Johnny Brennan.

It's probably small consolation to their families, but at least they died doing something they loved.; 12/24/12, 8:08 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: You see what happens when you go right instead of staying safely on the left?

This is what happens:

His body had been pummeled.

“There was no blood, but he didn’t have his helmet on, he didn’t have his backpack on, his jacket was pulled over his head,” Carlson said. “He had some scrapes on his belly. And just pulling him out of the snow you could feel it and see it. Giving him a couple of breaths, it just came out so quick. And you push on his chest and it would just collapse. There was nothing there. And Jim Jack — we’re all strong dudes, and there was just nothing left.”

“I pulled his arm upright, and it was just really soft,” Carlson added. “It was like pulling a wet towel. Pulled the other arm and it was the same feeling. And I pulled his legs out, and there was nothing connected to anything. It was completely crushed.”; 12/24/12, 8:08 PM
Mark said...: Seems like the NYT has finally caught up to Myst.; 12/24/12, 8:38 PM
Mark said...: If it had been rednecks the joke would be "hold my beer and watch this."; 12/24/12, 9:48 PM
Gary Rosen said...: " But maybe those 11 people didn't have the skills to dig into Benghazi for 6 months, or look at the way 0% interest is affecting people and businesses, or something else like that."

This.; 12/25/12, 1:35 AM
Gary Rosen said...: "What they really need to do is get their heads out of their asses"

I'm not sure if that type of surgery is reversible.; 12/25/12, 1:36 AM
Sam L. said...: I also have no idea what the story is about; but I have to ask, what if they had put the same effort into vetting Obama?; 12/25/12, 11:10 AM
Biff said...: Looking at the piece as a mixed media project, I thought it was well executed, though the writing was a bit disjointed and dragged here and there. I forwarded the link to a friend who is a big proponent of newspapers and the importance of the "craft" of journalism. He was impressed with the packaging, but he also said, a bit resignedly, "The piece needs a good editor. I don't think they exist anymore."; 12/25/12, 12:30 PM