The New York Times has to think like a tech startup (Sam Dolnick and Clifford Levy, editors, New York Times)
Channels with Peter Kafka
Vox Media Podcast Network
4.4 • 585 Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2016
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's sponsor is Video Blocks, a stock media company with clips everyone can afford. |
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| 0:25.8 | yearly subscription today for only 99 bucks at video blocks.com slash recode this is recode media with |
| 0:33.4 | peter kofka that's me it's powered by digital media. I said, that's me, but there is more |
| 0:37.7 | than one person in this room. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Ed Lee, who came in a few weeks ago with a special guest. And what's your job? Well, I'm, what they call me, the managing editor at Recode? You're my boss. Supposedly. You're one of my bosses? In theory. Yeah. Right? sometimes. |
| 0:52.7 | And because of your boss, you said, I want a podcast. |
| 0:55.0 | I said, hey, Peter, you know what? |
| 0:56.5 | Can you move aside for a second? |
| 0:57.9 | I want to... right sometimes and and because of your boss you said i want a podcast i said hey peter you know what |
| 0:56.5 | can you move aside for a second i want to talk to these guys over here that's okay so i interrupt you |
| 1:00.8 | so who are boss who did you interview so we i interviewed uh these two guys from the new |
| 1:05.2 | york time sam dolnik and cliff levy two pretty important guys cliff levy's a mass ed editor |
| 1:10.1 | that basically means he's one of the top editors. And Sam Dolnick is also a big-time editor, but just as significant. He's a member of the Ox Salzberger family that owns the Times, controls it anyway. And why do we talk to these two guys in particular? They're in charge of the digital transformation of the New York Times. So, you know, they had some interesting things to say about their app, what works, what doesn't work, more apps potentially to come. And, of course, you know, their paywall, which is actually doing pretty well for them, at least as a business. Cliff Levy is a former editor who sort of got moved into this digital role. And then Dolnik is, I don't know if you talked about this, probably not to his face, right? He's one of the three guys who are part of the family who may be one of the publishers. Exactly. I did mention it. He didn't bite for that, of course. And he's smart enough not to bite. But basically he, along with two of his cousins, Arthur, Greg Salzberger and David Purpich, the three of them are considered with the fifth generation generation of the Ox Salzberger family. And the three of them are basically up for succeeding Arthur Salzberger's publisher. Right. So you're talking to one of the guys who's basically involved in a multi-year tryout to be published in the New York Times. Right. And what's interesting about Sam is unlike most of the family, he's very vocal. He was willing to come on our podcast and talk publicly about what they're doing at the times and what the future of the times will be. So that fact alone is pretty interesting that he's willing to talk out loud. And he gets my vote. And you guys did this for, I think, the day of earnings? It was the day of the last quarter's earnings. We didn't really get too much in the business of it, but they certainly touted new figures in terms of their paywall subscribers, that sort of thing. You know how when we edit someone's copy? We say there's too much throat clearing at the top of the story. Yeah, this is it, right here. Stop the throat clearing, which you go right to the podcast. Here's that. And thank you, Peter. And thanks to our guests this week, Sam Dolnick and Cliff Levy, two pretty important guys from the New York Times. |
| 2:53.1 | I'm going to have them introduce themselves and tell us what they do. |
| 2:55.6 | Sam, why don't you go first? |
| 2:56.6 | What do you do at the Times? |
| 2:57.8 | Yeah, well, thanks for having me here. |
| 2:59.2 | I think the official title is Associate Editor, and that's a job that encompasses all kinds of things. |
| 3:06.2 | So I'm doing lots of the new digital project. |
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