Slow Implosion at the NYT.

Right now the NYT is ailing. It's the premier left-of-center paper in the country, but it's under assault from many directions and if trends continue it will become irrelevant. The locus of intense political discussion has migrated from the newsroom into the Blogosphere, a little-or-no-revenue environment which is a barren desert for them.

They could maintain their position as a shaper of national opinion by allowing free access as a loss-leader the way many other newspapers have done, but they've decided it's a money-losing game and have recently put up firewalls around their precious editorial and Op-ed content. That's their right, but their doppleganger the WSJ has continued to give it away for free, so they've effectively abandoned the public space to their often-malignant adversary on the Right and have become an ivory castle where their columnists are unavailable to most people.

Their top people will soon decamp to greener pastures where they can get back into the game and talent will be harder to accumulate and keep in the future - why write for the Greatest Newspaper nobody reads?

The LA Times and the Washington Post are having similar problems, but since they are also local papers they have some considerable footprint to fall back on. The NYT refuses to put funnies in there. It aims almost exclusively at an elite audience. But only about 5% of the population has any interest in their product and since it's eclipsed in the business arena by the WSJ, only news-junkies really have a priority to buy it every day. They have economies of scale on their side as a national organization, but it might not be enough.

Meanwhile the far-left has become very wary of the paper since their lack of skepticism over the WMD claims before the invasion of Iraq, and last year Jason Blair showed that the paper was prone to creative-writing parasites. And then there is the ongoing assault from the Right in an atmosphere increasingly partisan and hostile, where provable facts on the ground count for less over time. Times are tough.

It's still an excellent paper, and if I were a better person I'd read it every day, but I'm not, and I'm average in this regard, which does not bode well for them. They have to regenerate the Gravitas that they've lost from recent scandals, re-engage with the general public and find a way to succeed or they may be a slowing, sinking ship. There are hard days ahead.