Embracing technology: how CNN and the NYT are fighting back

Being a trusted news organization does not necessarily translate into overnight web success.

For example, Facebook has gained an important role in distributing news, and traditional media outlets are noticing. Last week, CNN's president Jon Klien said he was more "worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus the 2 million on Fox." (That being Fox News, its Murdoch-owned archrival). Recently, the successful social network surpassed Google in number of website visits in the United States.

But her article reveals that while CNN works alongside big tech players like Apple or Google to keep up with them, the New York Times does most of its work in-house, anticipating technical change and conducting research in its own lab.

At the end of last year, Bill Keller, the NYT's executive director, put forward the company's philosophy when it comes to technology at a meeting.

"We understand that The New York Times is, and has to be, a technology company as well as a journalism company. We want to make sure that that collaboration is optimized to achieve our journalistic and commercial ambitions."

And the NYT's dedication to technology shows. Bunz reveals that the New York Times has the first research and development group in the industry that is truly theirs with a 12-person team that analyzes data and builds products.

The Nieman Journalism Lab visited their R&D headquarters in Manhattan last year and described it as the place "where they're envisioning how news will be consumed in ten years," as they play around with e-readers and iPhones. NJL has video from the lab that shows the researchers testing new prototypes for browsing the NYT on e-readers.

And last October, NJL reported that the NYT was focusing on 7 priorities, three of them being technological ones, like improving collaboration between technologists and the newsroom, thinking web first, and a stronger strategy for cell phones and other mobile devices.

This time, Bunz talked to the technology team and discovered they are working on RIFD chips to find ways to incorporate it into the NYT repertoire. The project they came up with is a mobile application that gives users the ability to shift content back and forth between their desktop computers and mobile devices. (These are the same chips that have caused controversy for privacy breaches).

The chip was being used to track the user's reading, and followed the user as he shifted from reading on his phone to reading it on his television.

Another focus of their research is touch screen technology. Devices like the iPhone and the iPad have highlighted the growing importance of this capability and Amazon, maker of the Kindle was said to buy a touch screen technology company back in February.

For CNN; however, integrating technology is a matter of collaborating closely with today's technology leaders. General manager of CNN.com, KC Estenson, has embarked on a strategy of innovation and embracing new technologies since 2008.

He told Bunz that even though he does not want CNN to become a slave to Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, he wants these companies to prioritize CNN.

CNN is truly at the forefront of technological change. CNN not only has an iPhone app, a redesigned website, and several efforts to incorporate social media, but it also its own take on citizen journalism: iReport.

For CNN, citizen journalism has not been in direct opposition to traditional journalism. CNN has been able to incorporate citizen journalism into its newsgathering process, a practice which only serves to enrich and complement its own coverage. The feature has been key in the coverage of the Haiti earthquake as well as the aftermath of the presidential elections in Iran last year.

Bunz points out that the CNN iPhone app has incorporated the iReport feature prominently, making it incredibly easy to produce an iReport, blurring the lines between news production and news delivery. The successful citizen journalism endeavor was launched in 2006 and receives around 10,000 iReports per month.

While the newspaper industry continues to struggle through an advertising downturn, closures, and mobile apps that threaten their traditional role, some traditional news outlets have realized that staying relevant has a lot to do with embracing technology, be it through a sophisticated R&D department or collaborations with the biggest tech players.


Sources: Guardian, Nieman Journalism Lab (1), Nieman Journalism Lab (2), Poynter