An article about the forthcoming development of an API at the NY Times got me thinking about whether or not it would be smart for other newspapers to follow suit. Not all newspapers have content that would be in sufficient demand to make it work. But it’s worth considering.
Local sites, developers and verticals could take newspaper content (to varying degrees) and, to use the tired phrase, mash it up. Consumers would need to click back to the original source to get the full article or content bit in question in such a scenario. This could drive more page views, etc.
Newspapers have lots of great content that often isn’t getting the exposure it could because it has historically been buried in the newspaper site. That’s getting better lately. Making that newspaper content available to third parties seems like giving the content away but it might also be a way to reach audiences that the destination strategy alone doesn’t.
I haven’t thought it entirely through and this concept is certainly contrary to most of the newspaper work cultures out there. But there’s an interesting set of possibilities in the concept of newspaper APIs.
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Related: The WashingtonPost cut its newsroom by 10%. Earlier the parent company did something similar at Newsweek.
