Respectfully Remediating The Times
Yesterday’s column The Public Editor in The New York Times pondered on whether or not the newspaper is going to be able to sustain its quality when delivering breaking news through its web version. “That means more editors are constantly balancing speed against completeness to decide when an article is good enough to carry The Time’s respected brand.”
Speed versus completeness seems to be at the core of the dilemma. The world of “instant information” requires a different paradigm in the context of delivering breaking news. The Times is then struggling with the speed of the net. No easy task given that this brand is well know for its proven ability “to add significant value” to the stories that it publishes.
The process of adding value, in the traditional sense (i.e. high level of reporting and analysis), requires time. There is some digesting to be made before the raw piece of information is turned into “a traditional Times story.” So far it seems that we are trying to deal with a mediatic problem via the editorial board and that route might not offer a solution to the newspaper.
This dilemma is offering an interesting look at a real-life case study of "radical versus respectful" Remediation as conceived by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin almost a decade ago (more about this subject here). By looking at this problem from the mediatic point of view we could see how the current policy of the digital operation of not giving priority to “speed over content” is already providing an answer and leading the Times in the right direction.
The problem shouldn’t be how to (respectfully) adapt to the new medium, in this case, how to replicate a daily newspaper in the Web with the maximum speed possible, understanding that in its printed version, The Times is already close to the speed limit (once per day) and that in the Web there is no speed limit (once per second, faster if necessary). The question is not how to balance speed versus completeness but how to use the newer digital channel in a way that is consistent and adds value to readers.
When answering that question the brand is forced to take a hard look at its own persona as well as to its vision. Those answers will provide key direction. The speed of the Web does not necessarily mean the end of an audience that appreciates excellent content, nor it means that all breaking news must now be swallowed raw.
