Newspapers - Page One: Inside The New York Times

Last week, the class was about newspaper and its history until nowadays when many of the most important newspapers filled for bankruptcy or closed their doors forever. However, the biggest one is still standing; the New York Times is still the biggest newspaper company in existence even though the company suffered throughout the “technological boom” exploded and many people stop buying the paper copy and adapting to the digital news system. The documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times shows us the challenges that the newspaper faced in the last decade, unethical behavior, Wikileaks case, and financial challenges were presented in the documentary.

One key value that companies have to live with and create the company around is ethical behavior and credibility; especially for public traded companies that need to report to investors. The NY Times have showed us that they used to live with the value of unethical behavior is not accepted in the company. However, some unethical behavior created by journalists such as Judith Miller and Jason Blair, made that credibility disappear and customers started to believe that the newspaper was not that credible after all. The Jayson Blair case of unethical reporting at the NY Times was a huge scandal due to the fact that Blair was writing stories from places that he was not, which means that he would write a flourish and well written news from some place but he had never been on that place, experienced the situation cited on his reports and seen what he put on his reports. Blair also plagiarized a story from a colleague in which he ended up getting caught. The complexity of the issue brought down not only Blair but also the NY Times executive editor and managing editor, both were responsible for verifying the stories that Blair was writing about and let him loose. Many people stop buying the NY Times after this huge scandal because they believed that credibility was gone in the company and who knew which story was true or falsified.  

Along with the 2008 recession of the American market, many companies closed their doors, and the NY Times was also affected by the financial drama that many other companies suffered. The stocks price of the company felt considerable, one could by a share for almost $2 dollars. Employers were being released daily, everyone was on the edge and no one was being hired. A cleaning house process had begun and people with only the skills required were keeping their offices or cubicles intact. However, many employers that were over 30 years with the company had to be let go due to the recession and the lack of money. Later, the NY Times had to adapt to the new technologies that were coming up in the market. Researches shown that people were not buying a hard copy of the newspapers like before; people preferred to subscribe for the digital copy. Once again the NY Times had to “raise from the ashes” and battle in order to gain more costumers and surpass the bad economy that was surrounding the company.

The NY Times is a liberal news paper, which means that it does not choose side politically, it only tells the story without any opinion. The Wikileaks case, which Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, released many confidential documents. The government was revolted with that situation and did not want any news team to put that story forward. However, the NY Times was able to talk to Assange and get the story clear, since that was what Assange wanted since the beginning. In my opinion, the NY Times accepted according to its value that is to give the people the news in first hand, giving the people the cold-hard facts of what happens in closed doors in the government without any political side.