The New York Times has dropped its system of pitching stories for the front page of the newspaper in a move that highlights the paper’s shift towards digital.
The Poynter website reports that NYT executive editor Dean Baquet emailed staff last Thursday to announce the “small but significant step”, which he said was “intended to ensure that our digital platforms are much less tethered to print deadlines”.
Previously, each desk pitched for front-page space at morning Page 1 meetings. Baquet wrote that this tradition had “long made the Times distinctive” and he was “seeking to preserve the rigour of this process, but update it for the digital age”.
From this week, he said, desks will “compete for the best digital, rather than print, real estate”.
The best stories will be added to “Dean’s List”, and will receive “the very best play on all our digital platforms – web, mobile, social and others yet to come”. In an aside, Baquet adds: “I didn’t come up with that name, but I like it!”
There will be two Dean’s Lists – one decided at the 10am meeting, and one at the 4pm meeting – each consisting of three or four stories.
The articles will be “enterprise stories” – or original, in-depth pieces on a particular subject – rather than breaking news.
Baquet said the Page 1 stories would continue to be selected at an afternoon meeting, but that process will “play a less prominent role”.
The executive editor announced last May that the 10am meeting would further emphasise digital, in a memo that said it aimed to move “away from the next day’s A1 to a more lively discussion about how to create a robust, comprehensive digital report for the day”.
Baquet’s moves form part of the paper’s increasing shift towards digital, following criticism in its Innovation Report last year. The report said: “We are focusing too much time and energy on Page 1. This concern … has long been a concern for the leadership. And yet it persists. Page 1 sets the daily rhythms, consumes our focus, and provides the newsroom’s defining metric for success.”
The New York Times’s morning meetings have become famous, providing the title for Andrew Rossi’s 2011 documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times, which showed part of one of the conferences.