Jonathan Landman

More Landmania for you Friday afternoon!

As we wrote this week, NBC and The New York Times are going into the Olympics with different goals: NBC is covering the sports, The Times is waiting for a big news story.

Well, Jonathan Landman, The Times' deputy managing editor, laid out his own distinctions between NBC and the paper of record in his weekly memo. Even though Jeff Zucker believes NBC's coverage over the next two weeks is "the most ambitious broadcasting event ever attempted," with a planned 3,600 hours of coverage, including 2,200 hours live on the Internet, Mr. Landman isn't so impressed:

The formula for a great news and information Web site: Be interesting and useful.

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The New York Times' digital maestro Jon Landman brings out his favorite term again this week for his newsroom memo: platform agnostic! As we've previously discussed, Mr. Landman has been using a broad definition(s) of the term.

In one case, he's saying why in a breaking news story it's great to publish on the Web and in print, especially if the news can be broken on the Web first. (So, score one for the Web.) Then in another, he's saying why some material is better for the Web than for print and vice versa.

Today, he talks about more "agnostic platforms" (what?), but now it's how print was really getting the better of the Web in the way The Times was dating its stories.  read more »

At 10 a.m. on July 29, three top editors of The Washington Post arrived at the Times Tower on Eighth Avenue.

The Post, which is currently combining its digital and newspaper newsrooms, had come to one of its great rival news organizations for something unimaginable just a few years ago: advice.

"We're visiting a couple places to talk about the integration of our online and print news operations," said Phil Bennett, the managing editor of The Post, who joined Jim Brady and Liz Spayd, top online editors at washingtonpost.com. "The Times went through this three years ago and they were generous enough to open up that process and tell us what they discovered.  read more »

Longtime editor Jim Roberts is being given the title "associate managing editor" and will be added to the Times masthead. He works with Jon Landman on the digital side and his duties remain exactly the same. Here's the memo from Keller and Landman:  read more »

The City Room's post authored by Sewell Chan on the death of Heath Ledger has reached 1.78 million page views, a spokeswoman said. The Times can't confirm if it's an all-time record for an nytimes.com blog post, but it's probably awfully close.  read more »

Mike Nizza, who's been heavily involved with NYTimes.com over the past four years, managing presentation of news, is becoming a reporter. And not just that: He'll be taking over the Lede blog, previously written by Tom Zeller, who split for National Geographic last month.

--Michael Calderone Memo after the jump  read more »

Deputy managing editor and digital honcho Jon Landman sent a staff memo around the New York Times today, offically announcing Urbanite, "a daily newsletter devoted to some of the best stuff to do in New York today." It is, he writes, "the second-biggest premiere in New York this week." Edited by Arts & Leisure chief Ariel Kaminer, and written by former Boldfacer Melena Ryzik—writer, reporter, and snappy dresser—,the daily mailer has already made headlines this week on Jossip.

The "second-biggest premiere" status places the newsletter's debut below Borat—but above Volver! The memo follows.  read more »

Are you feeling lucky, Nicholas Kristof?  read more »

This past weekend, the New York Times published the first issue of Key, a quarterly real estate magazine packed with 150 pages of features and full-page color ads of new condominiums and modern furniture.

Today, the paper officially killed The Walk Through, its real estate blog. The decision to discontinue the blog does not come as a complete surprise: There have been no new posts since Aug. 7.

Launched in November 2005, the blog has seen the number of posts declinining this summer. There were 58 posts in June, 20 in July, and just 2 in the August. That is, until today's goodbye post.

Deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, the Times' online czar, said that the newspaper is dedicated to trying out different blogs.

"We're experimenting, growing them, seeing what happens, what works, what doesn't work, what gets people engaged," Landman said.

But despite the increased focus and space given to real estate at the Times, the Walk Through didn't work out.

"The real estate blog was a national real estate blog," Landman said. "The real estate that seems to really get people involved is local. It's the local that grabs you by the throat."

The Walk Through was primarily written by Damon Darlin, a technology reporter based out of San Francisco who's been breaking Hewlett Packard news this past week on the front page, leaving little time for real estate blogging.

"The nature of ours was that we were not doing as much of the breaking stuff," Darlin said a few weeks before the blog was terminated. "It tended to be more of an aggregation site than a scoop-oriented blog."

So will the Times launch a local real estate site, in an effort to grab New York's property voyeurs?

"Possibly," said Mr. Landman. "We're trying different things. We've had some success with sports blogs. We've launched a couple political blogs. The idea is to spread out around the paper."

-Michael Calderone

“It’s almost like watching a ballgame played without the ball,” Janet Maslin said.  read more »

New York Times fix-it editor Jonathan Landman, having turned the refurbished culture report over to Sam Sifton, now finds the rattling chassis of the Times' Web and television operations parked under his shade tree. His August 23 start date should give him somewhere between one and five weeks to get the paper's TimeSelect partial-pay Web system up and running in September, as announced earlier.

Press Release THE NEW YORK TIMES NAMES JONATHAN I. LANDMAN DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR

NEW YORK, July 22, 2005 - The New York Times announced today that Jonathan I. Landman, assistant managing editor, has been named deputy managing editor, responsible for digital journalism. The position will be effective August 23 and incorporates most of the responsibilities previously held by Michael Oreskes, who will become the new executive editor of the International Herald Tribune, as announced in May. In his new role, Mr. Landman will oversee Times Web and television content. He will continue to report to Executive Editor Bill Keller.

In making the announcement, Mr. Keller said, "Jon is one of our most creative editors and a journalist of the utmost integrity. He will be open to the immense potential of the young digital medium, but he will be anchored in the values that give us our credibility and authority. He is, moreover, adept at assembling great talent and making ambitious things happen. There is nothing quite as infectious as Jon Landman when he's excited about something--and about our ability to make waves on the Web, he is very excited indeed."  read more »

In his new role, Mr. Landman will have oversight of the digital newsroom as well as newsroom responsibility for Times television journalism. He will serve as the newsroom's representative on the Company's joint venture with Discovery Communications, Inc., the Discovery Times Channel.

Mr. Landman, 52, returned to assistant managing editor and member of The Times masthead in May of this year. He had been acting culture editor from 2004 to 2005. Previously, he was the assistant managing editor for enterprise from 2003 to 2004. He had been metropolitan editor of The Times since 1999 and editor of The Times's Week in Review since 1994. Previously, he served as deputy editor of the Washington bureau since 1992; assistant editor in Washington from 1991; assistant metropolitan editor from 1990 and assistant national editor from 1989. He joined The Times as a copy editor in 1987.

The American skyline of the future will have to get along without any more chunks of quartz, childre  read more »

Jonathan Landman, the newly appointed culture editor of The New York Times , said that he's "rusty a  read more »

On the afternoon of Monday, May 19, book agent David Vigliano was busy buffing up a five-page propos  read more »

This is only the beginning of it, not the end.  read more »