The New York Times has found a new source of funding for journalism: Isaac Mizrahi-designed raingear. In a memo to the company, New York Times president Scott Heekin-Canedy called the $99 coat and umbrella combo, “a summer sensation for The Times Store,” according to the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward. The New York Times has also tried creating a wine club as a way to cure their budget woes.

It’s easy to poke fun at the Times for the coat and the wine club, but Seward writes that this kind of merchandizing is “likely to play a significant role as news organizations scramble to replace print advertising revenue.”

The efforts are “a double edged sword” according to Megan Garber of the Columbia Journalism Review. Newspapers often engage in community building, and events like wine clubs—which USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are also trying—could be seen as an extension of that. And it’s not a big deal if the New York Times sells coats, as long as they use that money to fund cutting-edge journalism. On the other hand, Garber says, “it’s unfortunate that it’s not, strictly speaking, journalism.”

Both the coats and the wine club could also be seen as a replacement for the classified sections of newspapers, a revenue source that has been gutted by free services such as Craigslist. Classified ads, like the coats, had very little to do with journalism beyond funding the newspaper.

The real problem, however, is that media outlets haven’t yet figured out a way to fund their work using journalism. According to Garber, “I don’t know that we’ve proven that people aren’t willing to pay” for news. Newspapers simply haven’t figured out how to do it effectively, so far.

Sources:  Nieman Journalism Lab ,  Columbia Journalism Review  

Image from  the New York Times store . 

The New York Times’ audience, erudite as they may be, can still be stumped by words like “antediluvian,” “sumptuary,” or “hagiography.” The newspaper of record recently gave reporters a glimpse into which words confuse their readers the most when they gave Nieman Journalism Lab a list of the 50 most looked-up words on their website.

A (rather annoying) feature on NYTimes.com allows readers to look up a word, simply by double clicking the text on their computers. Using data from that function, the paper released an internal memo, gently urging editors to shy away from words like “louche,” which editors managed to use 27 times so far this year.

In the memo, deputy news editor Philip Corbett reminded writers and editors that readers “probably don’t carry an unabridged dictionary along with the newspaper as they take the subway to work. And they don’t expect a news article to pose the same linguistic challenge as Finnegans Wake.”

Source: Nieman Journalism Lab

Before creating The Wire, one of the greatest shows in the history of television, David Simon was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun. In a brief, over-lunch interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, Simon talks about the future of journalism and how newspapers can charge for content.

Some newspaper experts argue, “We already let the horse out of the barn door,” in giving content away for free, but Simon doesn’t buy that. He brings up the point that “television was free 30 years ago. Now everybody’s paying 16 bucks a month, 17 bucks a month, 70 dollars a month.” The key is getting a core group of writers that can’t be found anywhere else (like the HBO model). Either that, or sell porn.

You can watch the video below:

David Simon on charging for news and whether "The Wire" is journalism from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

(Thanks, Kottke.)

Source: Nieman Journalism Lab