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If I ever run into New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson (unlikely as it might be) I will sure as hell let her know that she is absolutely right to be excited about what her paper did with Snow Fall, which in my opinion was one of the first truly post-tablet storytelling experiences. At the Wired Business conference in New York earlier this week, Abramson said:

“Snow Fall” is now a verb.  “Everyone wants to snowfall now, every day, all desks,” she said. Reporters are waiting for time to “Snow Fall” their bigger story.  She said that the story originated from the sports desk — and took “months and months and months” of time —  but Snow Fall-type projects can come from anywhere.

Snow Fall, in case you missed it, was a multimedia project that included a gripping six-part story by John Branch, one of the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writers who was intrigued by the growing number of skiing fatalities. The stories were presented with interactive graphics, videos and bios of various snowboarders and skiers. It is brilliance personified and was rewarded with 2.9 million visits and 3.5 million page views within the first six days after publication. (The Times doesn’t reveal the total traffic it received since its release in December 2012.)

Snow Fall (and other such attempts) represent a great opportunity and the future for news organizations like The New York Times, especially as they are right now in a losing battle for attention with upstart competitors that include everyone from BuzzFeed to The Huffington Post. If you are the New York Times management, it is time to take a gamble: spend $25 million on creating 100 Snow Fall-like projects.

Money for something and clicks for free

In fact, it is important that our media brethren at the Times think even bigger than that, eventhough it would also mean taking a more prosaic, mercantile and business-like perspective to what they do.

They need to NOT think about Snow Fall as an add-on — as something that makes traditional content more web- or mobile/tablet-friendly — and instead treat it as a brand-new kind of media product that is created especially for the multiple device/many-screen world.

I have been involved with online publishing for a very long time — 18 years to be exact. And in that time I have seen the incumbent media make the same mistake again and again. They’ve often tried to adapt the content they’ve created for newspapers and magazines to the online world. And when they did embrace online, even then the online reporters were asked to do the same thing they did for the newspapers or the magazines.  (The Times, to its credit, published Snow Fall first online, and then in print three days later, which suggests it had a pretty clear understanding of the digital potential of a project like this.)

Yes Dorothy, the Internet is different

The internet is and will always be an immersive, interactive and communal platform. Many publishers continue to treat it like the old two-dimensional medium. Every time we have some major news events, such as the recent Boston tragedy, the social web brings the consumers of content into our newsrooms and makes them part of the process. It is one of the reasons why most of the big media still don’t get blogs. Sure, some writers like David Carr or Paul Krugman are an exception, but look at some of the Times blogs and you see they are just news stories (or features) retrofitted for the blog medium.

Federal agents descend on the home of a suspect-at-large in the Boston Marathon bombing. Getty Images

Blogging is a way of editing the world and presenting it to my community, and that means everything from photos, links, tweets and videos, in addition to sharing my raw thoughts and fully packaged features, scoops and even basic news. Every act of sharing tells you what I am interested in and what I am willing to learn and talk about.

There is a failure in the media business to understand that the medium and the content are intertwined much like those lovers on the walls of Ajanta and Ellora caves. It was one of the many reasons why Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily failed to impress me. It didn’t really invent a new form of storytelling for the tablet.

Now take all of that as context and then understand why I keep harping on the point that Snow Fall-type products are a brand new media, a whole new style of storytelling and a model for 21st-century journalism — one that doesn’t sacrifice the best of our profession, but takes it by the scruff of its neck, and drags its bloated, aging body into the new world and revives it with a shot of adrenaline.

Mr. Excel meets Ms. Editor

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However, that is only part of the story. The trick is not to get married to just the oohs-and-aahs of the Snow Fall, but to think of it as a business opportunity, much like the way Hollywood studios creatively monetize their blockbusters. My question is why can’t newspapers and magazine companies take the same approach and build a business model that actually factors in various opportunities that something like Snow Fall can offer?

So instead of starting with a newspaper story and adapting it to different formats, the Times should start with the Snow Fall. If you look at Snow Fall closely, you can see a cohesive approach to content, one that adapts and morphs to not only the medium of access, but to diverse business models — much like the movies.

From my own experience at magazines, I can tell you producing features isn’t cheap and can easily cost tens of thousand dollars, depending on the publication. The longer the lead time and higher the profile of the story, the bigger the costs. So from that perspective, spending some more on the post-tablet version of the feature shouldn’t break the bank.

The current editorial effort is to create something for a day or two of attention in the newspaper and hopefully for tens of thousands of pageviews. Why not start with the apps and e-readers (both paid), then follow up with the web version and then get to the newspaper. While apps and selling e-reader-oriented content might involve the Times learning new tricks, the company doesn’t need to change much for the latter two channels.

Blame my enteprenurial tendencies, but when I was experiencing Snow Fall, all I could see was stunning brand-advertising opportunities, that went beyond the dumb, commoditized advertising the Times is forced to put on its website. Why not embed a tasteful Land Rover ad or throw in one for Moncler? That is native advertising that actually allows organziations like the Times to live by their ethos and maintain the fidelity of their brand.

Hollywood, Baby

Now, let me explain why the Times can do it. And for that I will point to Hollywood again. One of the reasons why Hollywood studios succeed with the multi-tier approach to their “product” is because they do their best to ensure that they create an optimum experience. And they can do that with the right story, the right stars, the right production values and, most importantly, they have distribution. And gobs of money.

The Times and other big media companies have a lot of those same capabilities. They have great stars (real people, for god sake, are better stars than anything Hollywood can produce — see the Cleveland samaritan), they have great storytellers (editors and reporters, whose Pulitzers are testimony enough) and they have the ability to create the right production values (photographers, visual artists and designers). The Times also has a big audience – 35 million monthly visitors to their website in the U.S. alone, according to comScore – which means it has a lot of attention, which can be channeled effectively to promote new concepts.

Distribution Matters

Just as blockbuster movies get a lot of attention from media, Snow Fall got a lot of attention from the rest of the media community. Those millions of monthly visitors and lots of advertising space on print means distribution isn’t really a problem. And despite the financial headwinds, many of them — including the Times — still have a lot of money to try and finance a few dozen Snow Falls.

It isn’t clear how much money the Times spent on Snow Fall, but let’s just assume it was a small fortune. (Yes, I asked them and got this response: “We can’t disclose details about costs. Really, this is a newsroom effort. The business side works with the newsroom, of course, to provide the infrastructure and technology they need to tell stories in innovative ways.”)

And in exchange, it got a few million page views, but I am guessing they also built a nice backend infrastructure to create more such projects. As a result, the next Snow Fall is going to cost less, with most future spending going to the creative: words, photos, other multimedia elements and design.

So what will the Times (or someone like them) need to get it done? Simply put, a departure from the incumbent thinking, embracing today’s reality and re-imagining the work flow of a big city newspaper. In other words:

• Re-imagining its business model to factor in the reality of today’s world and forget the legacy of newsprint.
• Create a new breed of “producer” who can switch between Excel and content.
• Create a whole new breed of a journalist — one who has old-school values but also the ability to tell a story that works in many mediums of today.
• Build an editorial creative machine that works differently from a print-centric editorial group.

Now, if they can actually overcome their angst — and it hurts me to say this — they can change the conversation in the media business away from the increasingly shallow content and instead bring the focus back to quality and in-depth journalism, which is their stock in trade. If the New York Times management were feeling bold, it would put $25 million to work on creating 100 other Snow Falls and basically change the reader’s expectations of what long-form digital content and journalism are in the new century.

So if you want to fight BuzzFeed and HuffPo, there you go, Jill!

Abramson is familiar with working on major news events, including 9/11, but said her primary concerns were different this time.

“In Boston, what was first and foremost was making sure our standards were understood,” Abramson said at the Wired Business conference in New York City on Tuesday.

Abramson said that, for major stories in the past, the only focus was the next day’s paper. This time around, she was preoccupied with ensuring that no one at the paper seized on one of the many thinly sourced rumors flying around on social media.

Abramson, speaking with Wired editor-in-chief Scott Dedich, also addressed other recent trends in media, including a popular marketing trend.

“Native advertising seems to be for the conference set. It’s the buzz word of 2013,” she said, pouring cold water on a term popularized by BuzzFeed and others.

Abramson spoke of the “months and months and months” of effort that went into producing the NYT’s Pulitzer Prize-winning multimedia story “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” but didn’t address how the paper will fund such projects in the future. She did note, though, that technical virtuosity isn’t enough for great journalism.

“I think that what a new editor needs first and foremost, and this sounds old-fashioned, is that gut sense of what’s a great NYT story.”

The discussion didn’t touch on a widely panned Politico report that Abramson was losing the newsroom, but did address her role as first female executive editor of the Times. She said that there was no point being the first woman in anything if there wasn’t going to be a second, but said she was pleased with overall gender roles at the Times.

Abramson, who has been in the job for a year, made the remarks during a freewheeling interview with Henry Blodget at Business Insider’s Ignition conference in New York Tuesday. She offered a frank and confident appraisal of the Times and the evolving business of news.

In response to a question about how the Times divides up the newsroom between print and digital reporters, Abramson says most staff no longer fit into one category or the other. She does not oversee “the paper” or “the web” but rather a global product she calls simply “the news report.”

“There was too much focus in the past on the print product,” said Abramson. “[We] now make sure energy is 24/7 and not focused on newspaper deadlines and rhythms.”

This is a relief to hear because, from a business perspective, the Times has recently been relying on price hikes to its print paper to make up for cratering ad revenue. The price increases, however, provide at best a medium-term solution. Abramson acknowledged as much, noting that when she taught journalism classes at Yale, none of her students read paper newspapers.

Abramson’s pragmatism improves the Times‘ chances of developing the right longterm digital strategy which, for now, relies heavily on an imperfect paywall model. Her presence may also help the Times preserve its role as a news authority at a time when many once-mighty news brands are rapidly waning.

The interview also provided some personal color. Abramson, who grew up on New York’s Upper West Side with parents who had two NYT subscriptions, said she is regularly accosted by fellow dog walkers over the Times’ Sunday Review.

There will also be some staff reductions on the business side though it wasn’t clear how many jobs would be lost in those departments. The cuts are expected to come from not filling vacant positions.

It also isn’t certain that Abramson will be able to keep her promise about not handing down layoffs. In December 2009, then NYT editor Bill Keller warned the paper would have to resort to layoffs after setting a target of 100 voluntary buyouts in late October of that year.

The NYT’s newsroom staff hit a high of around 1,300 people before 2008′s cuts. It now has roughly 1,250 more than any other U.S. newspaper. The buyout formula effectively works out to two weeks of pay for each year a staffer has been with the company. The most a staffer could get from a buyout is one year’s worth of salary.

Last month, NYTCO CEO Janet Robinson spoke at an investors conference and reiterated her early statement about Q3 trending a bit negatively.

The NYTCo is now expecting 8 percent declines in Q3 ad revenue, with a 10 percent drop in print, and even a 2- to 3 decrease in digital ad revenues, which are partly due to the About Group’s continuing troubles. At the end of September, About.com restructured its editorial operations team and said it would be dismissing 15 existing staffers, but adding 10 new ones.

Apart from About’s particular challenges, newspaper publishers in general have been losing the ground gained in 2010, as the wider ad recovery helped arrest the steep declines of the two previous years. As the NYTCo prepares for its Q3 earnings on Oct. 20, the most executives can do now is prepare investors for some more difficult times.

To the Staff:

We are announcing today a limited buyout opportunity to newsroom volunteers, both excluded staffers as well as those members of the Guild-Times bargaining unit covered by the existing print contract.

By limited, that means we are looking at fewer than 20 buyouts across the newsroom, among volunteers who see the offer as being to their financial advantage at this time. The offering to the newsroom is, in any event, wholly voluntary. No matter how many people do or do not raise their hands, no one in the newsroom – either Guild or excluded – will be laid off as a result of this program.

For excluded staff members, the buyout formula effectively works out to two weeks of pay per year of service, with a maximum of one year in salary. The existing formula for Guild members in general provides for three weeks of severance per year, capping at a maximum of two years worth of salary.

The Guild buyout formula is among the issues on the table in the current contractual negotiations between the company and the Guild, and the company has proposed that in the future, the Guild terms mirror those now available to excluded employees. But until the company and the union agree on a new contract and the membership ratifies it – hopefully in the coming months – the current buyout terms remain in effect.

While we remain as loyal as ever to Times journalism and journalists, the uncertain economy has posed a continuing and difficult challenge to The Times: how to rebalance our business for the digital age while remaining steadfast to the quality journalism that defines us?

As you all know, the company has consistently chosen to protect the journalism, even while cutting production and other business-side costs and continuing to demand exacting financial discipline in the way the newsroom itself marshals its resources and controls its spending. Even now, we field a newsroom staff about the same size as it was a decade ago, and continue to invest in new opportunities and new platforms for our content.

In conjunction with this offering in the newsroom, the business side is making a small adjustment in its own budget, mostly by eliminating some open slots. This is consistent with ongoing efforts among our colleagues in the business side departments, who have cut their own staff in half over the past decade.

As in previous buyouts, to ensure we do not cut too deeply in our journalistic muscle, we do reserve the right to turn down some volunteers who are in those areas of the newsroom where we feel we cannot reduce our numbers. It is for that reason, in part, that we have excluded those members of the Guild who are covered by the separate Digital contract.

Anyone who is eligible for this offering and interested in volunteering should contact Bill Schmidt’s office by Monday, Oct. 24, and we will get you a copy of the package. You will have 45 days from then to decide whether or not you want to formally apply for a buyout.
Jill, Dean and John

Keller expects all kinds of “entertaining nonsense” about the move and the editor rotation that will cover Abramson’s usual daily duties. Not sure how entertaining this is but here goes.

When Jon Landman switched to culture editor last fall from head of digital, he wasn’t replaced. In that memo, Keller explained that Landman made the case again it because it was time fo the top leadership to take full responsibility for the integrated newsroom. He added, “the main thing to say now is that Jill and I, in particular, see this as time to rearrange our priorities and devote more of our bandwidth to digital journalism.”

That was roughly eight months ago and several months before the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) committed to the meter strategy. I’m not sure about Abramson but even in our much smaller news organization it can be hard to find that extra bandwidth to focus intensely on one aspect in the crush of daily duties. This is one way to solve that and not a bad one. It will emphasize the importance of online news — and continued integration.

Abramson is clearly in the running to head the NYT and at this point in the paper’s trajectory, it makes little sense to consider someone who hasn’t had the experience of managing the online news operations.

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May 19 memo from Bill Keller

Colleagues:

Beginning June 1, Jill is going to take a six-month detour from the traditional Managing Editor role to run the news part of the Website and to fully immerse herself in the digital part of our world. Her aim will be to push our integration to the next level, which means mastering all aspects of our digital operation, not only the newsroom digital pipeline but also the company’s digital strategy in all its ramifications. During this time she will largely disengage from day-to-day news coverage.

We have invited three editors — Larry Ingrassia, Dean Baquet and Susan Chira — each to fill in for two months as acting Managing Editor for News. Larry will step up for June and July, Dean for August and September, and Susan for October and November.

No doubt this rotation will be widely analyzed, interpreted and speculated about. (I look forward to hearing and reading a lot of entertaining nonsense.) The real purpose is threefold: 1) to give us a chance to see some of our best editors applying their talents to the entire news report, in print and online, rather than to specific departments; 2) to give these editors a break, a digression, a cobweb-clearing, an adventure; and 3) to allow deputies in their departments to show what they can do with a couple months of greater authority and autonomy.

At the end of these sojourns, we expect the substitutes to return to their department a little smarter and a little refreshed. Jill will return to the ME job ready to guide the final lap of newsroom integration.

Best,

Bill