Here in Austin, Tex., where I’m attending the digital media extravaganza known as South by Southwest, or SXSW, the arrival of the local newspaper at the hotel room door each morning seems almost otherworldly. Amid this gathering of techie (not to say geeky, because that would be a bit unfair), mostly young, mostly male participants, where plaid flannel is the de rigueur fashion note and Google Glasses are the accessory of choice, The Austin American-Statesman feels like an unfamiliar visitor from the distant past. (It’s a good paper, by the way, with Pulitzer Prizes in its history and a lively local report each day.) To put it mildly, this is not a print newspaper kind of crowd.
Still, it is a crowd that is deeply interested in information and innovation. So, when The Times’s David Carr spoke on Sunday, he managed to attracthundreds of SXSW participants to a large hall, where his topic was “Gates of Heaven, Gates of Hell†â€" at least some of those gates referring to newspaper paywalls. He discussed the success of The Times’s paywall and other recent changes in the paper’s business model. The questions, oddly enough, skewed toward print, with the questioners expressing their hope that the printed newspaper would stick around for a long time.
Mr. Carr, who earlier gave a shout-out to his boss, Jill Abramson, The Times’s executive editor, who was in the audience, responded with a reassuring paean to the enduring appeal of print advertising and circulation to newspaper executives: “We put the white paper out because they give us the green paper back.†And, he added, “We like that.†(Print ads and print circulation still provide most of the company’s revenue.)
Mr. Carr joked, though, that his own expertise on business plans is not the final word: “In my job,â! € he said, “they ask me what I think and go as quickly as possible the other way.â€
I am scheduled on Monday to take part in a panel discussion looking at which version of an evolving news story becomes part of the digital archive, and how â€" if at all â€" the changes in the online version of an article can be looked up later. My co-panelist is Eric Price, an M.I.T. graduate student who (with the former Timeswoman Jennifer 8. Lee) formed the organization called NewsDiffs, which very effectively keeps track of those changes. I don’t expect to draw anything like a Carr-sized crowd, but at SXSW, it’s all relative. Nate Silver, the big data guru, filled an even bigger hall on Sunday, and the entrepreneur Elon Musk (Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX) had overflow rooms for his Saturday talk.
