Cachet, Not Cash, Fuels NYT Local Team Ups

By: Michael Depp | NetNewsCheck.com

In the news business, there’s really no pressure like New York Times pressure. Two years after the Times initiated a small cluster of news-producing partnerships with nonprofit, Web-only publications in the Bay Area, Chicago and Texas, those independents are learning that the Gray Lady’s instant credibility comes with an exacting set of standards and needs, if not necessarily a serious boost in revenue or Web traffic.

Editors at the Bay Citizen, the Texas Tribune and the Chicago News Cooperative uniformly agree that the Times partnership has been a boon to their legitimacy and to their respective missions to raise the level of local journalism in their markets. But some acknowledge that weighing the Times’ need — two pages of original local news for the back pages of the print edition’s A section twice a week — against their own can be a challenge, especially as they try to define their own identities as neophyte news organizations.