New York Times Launches 'Skimmable' Feature

NY Times.com to Launch ‘Skimmable’ Feature

The New York Times has announced the upcoming launch of a new feature, one that aims to mimic - online - the enjoyment of spreading the Sunday Times out over the dining room table and skimming it while eating brunch.

Of course, the digital version of that act will come without “the crinkle of the paper, the circular stain of coffee, and the smell of newsprint,” quips the Times’s FirstLook website.

The feature, called Article Skimmer (see a working prototype here), will see headlines extended across a broad space. It will display as many stories as possible on the screen — like a “giant uncut scroll of paper” — making it easy to navigate through sections and articles with a mouse or keyboard shortcuts. Visually, it is also easier to skim, writes MarketingVOX.

And instead of displaying dates, older articles will gradually fade away, so readers can quickly identify the most recent material.

Financially, it’s been a tough year for the New York Times. Profits plummeted nearly 50% in the fourth quarter, and internet ad revenues for its online properties fell 20% from Nov. ‘07 to Nov. ‘08.

To boost ad revenue, the Times recently began selling ads on its front page, a move that several other papers across the country have adopted as newspaper advertising tanks across the board, plummeting to $8.92 billion in Q3 2008 - an 18% drop of nearly $2 billion from Q3 2007, and a 6.9% drop from Q2 2008 (chart), according to figures released by the Newspaper Association of America.

NY Times front page ads are said to be running at $75,000 for weekdays, $100,000 on weekends. The announcement on FirstLook does not address the subject of how advertising will be incorporated into Article Skimmer, if at all.

Last week media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owns rival rag the Wall Street Journal, suggested the Times start charging an online subscription fee to compensate for lost revenues.