1. By Celia Brown
Director of Marketing, SAP
T: @celiabrown
10 Golden Nuggets from
the NYTimes Innovation
Report

2. "We need makers,
entrepreneurs, reader
advocates and
zeitgeist watchers.“
-NYTimes Innovation Report 2014

3. The Homepage is Dead
Page One remained
the fulcrum of the
Times operation,
despite only thirty
percent of readers
actually visiting
the Times‘ home
page.

4. The TimesTwitter
account is run by the
newsroom, while its
Facebook page is
managed by the
business. Keeping all its
promotional tools in
silos has inhibited its
ability to help its
journalists find and
build a base of loyal
readers, increasingly
who are reading and
spreading content on
mobile.
Master Mobile toWin in Social

5. Because we are journalists we tend to look
at our competitors through the lens of
content rather than strategy. Buzzfeed,
Huffington Post and USAToday are
Content Alone is Insufficient
succeeding because of
their sophisticated
social, search and
community building
tools and strategies,
often in spite of their
content.

6. Unlike printed material which is refined until perfected, a
digital experiment should be released quickly and refined
through a cycle of continuous improvement- measuring
performance, studying results, shuttering losers and
building on winners. (p. 32)
Rapid Experimentation is Key

7. The product and design
teams are developing a
collections format, and
they should further
consider tools to make it
easier for journalists, and
maybe even readers, to
create collections and
repackage the content. (p.
34)
Andrew Phelps
made a Flipboard
magazine of the
Times’ best obits
from 2013 on a
whim. It became
the best-read
collection ever on
Flipboard. (p. 33)
Curate and Repackage Content

8. There are about 14.7 million
articles in theTimes’ archives
dating back to 1851.TheTimes
needs to do a better job of
resurfacing archival content.The
report cites Gawker repackaging a
161-year-oldTimes story on
Solomon Northup timed with the
release of 12Years A Slave. “We
can be both a daily newsletter and
a library — offering news every
day, as well as providing context,
relevance and timeless works of
journalism.” (p. 28)
Be both a Library and a Newsroom

9. The Times is woefully behind in its
tagging and structured data practices.
“Without better tagging, we are
hamstrung in our ability to allow
readers to follow developing stories,
discover nearby restaurants that we
have reviewed or even have our
photos show up on search engines.”
(p. 41)
It took seven
years for the
Times to begin
to tag stories
“September 11.”
(p. 41)
Implement A SuccessfulTagging Strategy

10. … the vast majority of
our content is still
published late in the
evening, but our
digital traffic is busiest
early in the morning.
We aim ambitious
stories for Sunday
because it is our
largest print
readership, but
weekends are slowest
online. (p. 86)
Publish on a Digital Schedule

11. TheTimes plans to create a section of the
homepage that uses reader patterns to
customize a list of content that readers
missed but would most likely want to see.
Personalize content to engage readers
“Though all readers would
see the same top news
stories, the other articles
we show them would be
customized to reflect what
they haven’t seen.” (p. 37)