The New York Times’ chief technology officer Marc Frons and Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news spoke recently with New York media blog fishbowlNY. The topic of discussion was their API and the desire to open the code up to, “programmers, developers, and others”. The timeline is weeks to months. Below are a few excerpts.
The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to “make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data.”
Pilhofer and Frons both declined to give any specific dates, but Pilhofer said the API itself will be done “within a matter of weeks.” In the next six months, “we’ll have some of the major pieces — a restaurant guide, weekend events listings and books,” Frons added. fishbowlNY
There are no other newspapers out there that I know of, who have given this level of access to the general public, for better or worse. The idea of serving up data sets for content is not new.
- Gannett’s Asbury Park Press developed a powerful application called DataUniverse and released it in December of 2006. They, “…acquire(d) government databases – such as criminal convictions and property assessments…” and made the data searchable through their website. It accounts for something like 1/4 of all their web traffic and is constantly being refined and updated.
- Adrian Holovay created chicagocrime.org, then Everyblock, “to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We’re a geographic filter — a “news feed” for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.” Everyblock is more powerful than that description reads and I recommend you check it out to see for yourself.
The New York Times has a big predicament in front of it right now. They are not diversified. They own 3 media groups (NY Times, Boston Globe, and Hearald Tribune), investments in paper mills, and four online only Internet companies (about.com, Calorie-Count.com, UCompareHealthCare.com, ConsumerSearch.com). NYT company generates ~80% of their revenues from advertising from their print products. I’m guessing that the hope with the API release is that it will trigger faster online revenue growth. Only time will tell, but I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of mash-ups, widgets and plugins the developers come up with. Google maps stuff? good! Facebook mob wars? hmmm… I think the first thing I’d develop is an easier NY Times crossword.
Related posts: