New York Times API Coming
As print circulation continues its slide at most newspapers, one of the United States' most respected newspapers, the New York Times, is taking steps to boost online readership. The paper is already the third most cited web site on Techmeme, and the first on Memeorandum, proving that bloggers at least pay attention to its reporting. Now, the Grey Lady is working on an API that aims to make the entire newspaper "programmable."
In addition to the API, New York Times CTO Marc Frons told mediabistro.com that internal developers at the paper will use the platform to organize structured data on the site. Following that, the paper plans to offer developer keys to the API allowing programmers to more easily mash up the paper's structured content -- reviews, event listings, recipes, etc. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."
The API itself should be done by the time summer arrives in the US, with more significant chunks available to the public within 6 months.
The New York Times has taken a lead in bringing newspapers into the digital landscape over the past year. In 2006, the company launched its specialized RSS reader built on the Microsoft WPF platform, but it was this past fall that things really started to heat up on the digital side of the Times.
The paper put out a Facebook application, which has been a modest success with about 1,500 daily active users. They followed that in October with the controversial decision to put reader comments on the main page of the paper's web site.
In November, the Times took Techmeme full on by launching its own news aggregator powered by the Blogrunner technology it had acquired. Blogrunner "is our answer to Techmeme, integrated with our main site. It is technology we've built ourselves, based on Blogrunner, a company we bought last year," NYT Tech Editor Saul Hansell told us at the time.
Then in January, the company made an investment in Wordpress, the popular blogging engine that powers their own blogs.
Conclusion
An API is a logical next step for newspapers. It will give developers access to their vast amounts of well-researched data, and allows the paper's brand to be spread easily across the web. More access to Times content and the ability to mash it up in new and interesting ways can only be a win for both readers and the paper.
"The web of the near-term future isn't about pages any more," wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick in his massive post on APIs in March. "It's about data, flying around, hopefully under the control of users, and offering a world of possibilities that few of us could have imagined just a few years ago."
The New York Times seems to understand that. Says Aron Pilhofer, the paper's interactive news editor, the goal of an API is to "make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data."
Comments
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It's a great and obvious idea for anyone with a massive data pool like NYTimes, but I'm curious how this stops the flow of cash out of the Grey Lady's doors. Seems like it only makes it more difficult for them to monetize their content.
Posted by: Dan | May 26, 2008 8:28 AM
This is precisely the move the Guardian (UK) announced a while ago when it hired Matt McAlister from Yahoo (in fact he's getting setup in London as we speak - he's twittering his house search, car purchase and meetings with the Guardian teams!)
Posted by: Bradley | May 26, 2008 9:29 AM
Apparently the track back didn't work, so, for your Italian readers: http://www.schinina.it/2008/05/new-york-times-api-il-momento-di-un-giornalismo-davvero-collaborativo/
Posted by: Eugenio | May 26, 2008 12:14 PM
I applaud the Times for taking the initiative. I just posted this http://tinyurl.com/5wkrt7 directed at more localized, community newspapers. Until corporate news organizations take ownership, it's going to be slash and burn mentality. This is where social, community newspapers come in.
Posted by: Jason Kintzler | May 26, 2008 12:40 PM
SUPER interesting. Love the idea of anybody being able to create an interface to the entire NYT -- for different platforms & different tastes (e.g. a photo- or multimedia-heavy version, a stripped-down delicious-style version, etc.).
Posted by: Robin | May 26, 2008 2:47 PM
NY times started pretty interesting initiative to speak to its users.
They created "a community" in LiveJournal.com which is pretty popular among Russian users. The address of the community is http://community.livejournal.com/nytimesinmoscow/
Basically, they publish Russian translation of their articles about Russia, collect feedback and publish it. The only one thing which disturbs me about this community is the fact that they made a contract with the SUP, a Russian company owned by pro-Kremlin oligarch Mamut to start this community. (see http://www.sup.com/en/blog.html, a post on Feb 26 2008) I do not understand why do they need any special cooperation with the SUP to run nytimesinmoscow
Posted by: AZ | May 26, 2008 4:47 PM
I had no idea things would start moving this quickly, the writing was on the wall that more and more news sources, corporations would provide an API, a webservice, widgets and gagdets that no longer require a user to navigate to various sites, but had not idea it would start happenning this fast, this is a significant step.
http://webshopinabox.peter-tashjian.com/WebShopInABox.htm
Posted by: Peter T - Webshop | May 26, 2008 8:14 PM
Yep, looks like trackbacks don't work. My reaction: The New York Times and The Death Of Old Media
Posted by: Benjamin Kudria | May 26, 2008 10:08 PM
Very interesting. But could anyone explain me how they will earn money doing this? Or is this question irrelevant (and if so, why?)
Or is this just a way to see their content all over the web, hoping that users will eventually come and see their website (where the advertisements are), and how realistic is this? Or would it be possible to integrate advertisements in the content (and would we like that?).
Posted by: roland legrand | May 27, 2008 12:59 AM
Brilliant.
Posted by: Syndicated Post | May 27, 2008 2:56 AM
@ #7 [ AZ ]
"I do not understand why do they need any special cooperation with the SUP to run nytimesinmoscow"
Then you do not understand the way of the world. Ponder this deeply.
Posted by: yorubian | May 27, 2008 5:28 AM
Cant wait for this.
Posted by: Malcolm Tyson | May 27, 2008 1:48 PM
For everyone who asked, more or less, "how does the Times make money doing this?" I think the most admirable aspect of it is that they are doing it even though nobody quite knows the answer! The entire industry is changing, and probably shrinking, and many companies would freeze in their tracks or just chop heads with reckless abandon. The Times is lowering expenses, for sure, but I am very glad they are also willing to invest in the future.
The more the Internet fills up with low-grade journalism and promotional detritus, the more we need the Times. Their business model is under pressure but their demand curve is strong -- strong for the Times than for many news papers. I very much hope this works, and, if it doesn't work, I very much hope they keep trying new things.
Posted by: Tom Hughes | May 29, 2008 5:14 PM
This is a great move on their behalf. Allowing developers to use their service to create new services.
Posted by: Yasser | May 31, 2008 6:54 PM
Great news.
Small item for the wish list:
Expose your data in RDF :)
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Posted by: Wendy | June 17, 2008 9:27 PM