'NYT' Moves Up Deadline for First National Edition

By: E&P Staff The New York Times is switching to a slightly earlier deadline for the first national edition of its Monday-through-Saturday papers, beginning Oct. 18. Previously, the deadline was 9:30 p.m.; now it will be 9 p.m.

?We're doing this to save money,? Managing Editor John Geddes wrote in a Wednesday memo to the Times? staff, posted by Zach Seward of the Nieman Journalism Lab. ?By closing 30 minutes earlier we'll be able to include papers printed in some of our national sites in shipments made by other publishers to distant markets. That means we can drop other, more costly NYT-only transportation arrangements.?

The memo follows:
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To the staff,

On Sunday, Oct 18th, we?ll be moving the deadline for our first national edition to 9:00 pm from 9:30 for our Monday through Saturday papers.

We're doing this to save money. By closing 30 minutes earlier we'll be able to include papers printed in some of our national sites in shipments made by other publishers to distant markets. That means we can drop other, more costly NYT-only transportation arrangements. By piggybacking our shipments in these markets, we expect to save a significant amount of money and reach even more cities earlier.

Naturally there'll be some rare nights when the earlier national deadlines and the timing of major news events collide. In those cases, we will, as we've done in the past, make adjustments to insure that readers of the early edition don't miss the news.

We?re not making any changes in any of our other deadlines. That said, the earlier national deadline will mean that we will need to adjust some of our staffing and other schedules. We will also need to keep the gains we've made on our copy-flow progress by enforcing filing deadlines and getting stories into the editing pipeline efficiently.

Thanks,

John