The New York Times debuted TimesCast today, “a daily video news program that offers an inside look at the top stories The Times is following.”
I love the general idea — taking readers inside the newsroom, where the decisions on what gets covered and what doesn’t are made. And the beginning of the video, set in a story conference meeting room, made me think we might get a good bit of that.
But we didn’t, really. The video camera quickly moved into the newsroom, where reporters and editors were interviewed about stories that presumably will be pushed out to the web and print in the next 12 hours. These interviews essentially became two-minute promotions for the stories.
So we didn’t see anyone explain why the Rio Tinto story is more important to NYT readers than the European airline strike (Okay, kinda bad examples … but it is the day after health care reform passed the House…). And we certainly didn’t see any debate between decision-makers, debate that has to happen every day at a place like NYT.
Should the Times show a little more of its inner workings in TimesCast? Could it? Could your favorite media outlet (or the one that employs me) ramp up to that level of transparency? When I have time for a longer post …
