Times vs. Journal Digital Battle Royale! Landman Says WSJ Has Done 'Nothing' With Its Web Site
It's a late, sleepy summer Friday, but New York Times online editor Jon Landman has some choice words for Rupert Murdoch, Robert Thomson and The Wall Street Journal's online editor, Alan Murray, this afternoon.
Well, technically speaking, he doesn't name any of those people in his weekly memo, or the paper itself, but in his weekly briefing designed to discuss accomplishments for nytimes.com, he comes out swinging! Namely, he says wsj.com has accomplished nothing!
As Mr.Landman writes:
There's some financial newspaper out there, on Wall Street or maybe in midtown, we aren't sure. There's new ownership, it seems, some rich guy who says he wants his paper to be more like ours. So we challenged him to compete head to head with our Thanksgiving Day Topics Page. That was seven months ago. So far, nothing.
They must be busy covering the bad economy. Hard to do both, we suppose.
Here's what Mr. Landman wrote back in April reminding Mr. Murdoch about this "challenge:"
Challenge
It was many, many months ago that we challenged Rupert Murdoch to a Thanksgiving Day Topic Page faceoff. Here's our Thanksgiving Day Topic Page, we said.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/thanksgiving_day/index.htmlWhere's yours? We didn't get an answer. (And WSJ customers didn't get a
topic page!)
(The original challenge can be found here.)
Robert Thomson said the Web page would be redesigned in the fall, and we're suddenly giddy over a new, digital war! Forget newsstand sales! Topic Pages is the prize now!
Here's the memo in its entirety:
To: The Staff From: Jonathan Landman & Vivian Schiller
July 18, 2008
There's some financial newspaper out there, on Wall Street or maybe in midtown, we aren't sure. There's new ownership, it seems, some rich guy who says he wants his paper to be more like ours. So we challenged him to compete head to head with our Thanksgiving Day Topics Page. That was seven months ago. So far, nothing.
They must be busy covering the bad economy. Hard to do both, we suppose. We sympathize, yet at the same time we don't see why a snappy Web site can't do turkeys and dismal science. Especially one with all those imaginative
uses of multimedia, topics pages, blogs, reader comments and other fresh and exciting things.Markets
If you want to really dig into the economic news you have to crunch some numbers. You can get them by clicking around on a bunch of government and reference Web sites. Or you can click here.
http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/markets/overview/overview.aspThat's our redesigned and expanded Markets section. It's a data fest with all sorts of specialty mini-sites.
Like currencies
http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/markets/currencies/currencies.aspConsumer rates
http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/markets/rates/rates.aspBonds
http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/markets/bonds/bonds.aspAnd a bunch of others.
There's also a new section front for Economy, the first of a group of ambitious sub-verticals in the Business section.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/economy/index.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1215806444-PouHR1C5bnPnngVYtmBPSAComing in Economy: An economics blog by David Leonhardt and Catherine Rampell.
Perspective
It's no longer unusual to see professional athletes blogging. Still, it's nice when they do it for us.
http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/basketball-diary-in-baltimore-preparing-for-beijing/http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/milton-bradley-what-have-i-done-now/
Young
It's the young folks who are adapting to the Web, right? Hah!
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/fashion/20080713_STREET_FEATURE/index.htmlHe does it every week. People like it. Here's a piece of fan mail:
"Mr. Cunningham: I've been a regular reader of nytimes.com for a couple of years, and I enjoy so much about the site. The interactivity of readers adding comments on various stories of note, the excellent writing, features, columns. But I must tell you, your pieces make my week every time. I can't wait to see the slide shows and familiar streets, the
vibrancy of the photos. But it is always your voice, your accent, your cheery and bemused take on the fashion that I really enjoy. Thanks so much. Keep it up! (I've been hoping we readers would have the option to comment
on your stuff...perhaps soon!)"
Sorry if I'm the only one in the dark here, but what's a Thanksgiving Day Topics Page?
Landman must be a man of great wisdom. Very few people beg the lightning to strike.
Very cocky. But as my granny used to tell me, "Don't laugh too much or God'll give you something to cry about."
What's the old adage? "Let another praise you" Well as one who knows intimately what goes on at NYTIMES.com they sure as hell ought to be producing that stuff. It's the most overstaffed place since the DMV. So many people walking around telling other people what to do and so few people actually doing any work. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Clearly Landman and the masthead at NYT are scared enough at wsj.com's triple in traffic in last 18 months enough to go on the attack. Since when does the grey lady go on the offenive?
Wow! I like the NYT website, but to suggest that it is superior to the WSJ.com because of its archive page that collects stories about Thanksgiving day (stuffing recipes for everyone!) is kinda ludicrous. The Journal beats the hell out of the Times every day in business and economics reporting, and I suspect that over time they will make inroads in lifestyle areas, too.
As someone who's run major media websites for the past 10 years, I can't help thinking that Landman's memo (although intended to be light and humorous, I'm sure) is a sign of misguided (deluded?) management priorities. And, worse, it isn't even funny.
NYT Co. should use more bucks spent on its Online to improve the paper's much-weakened Bizday section. Stock quotes were decimated. No dividends reported. WSJ vastly superior. And WSJ Online consistently beats Times Online on important business/financial news.
They must be busy covering the bad economy. Hard to do both, we suppose. We sympathize, yet at the same time we don't see why a snappy Web site can't do turkeys and dismal science.
Cheap