Interview: New NYT.com GM Denise Warren: Tip-toeing Into Aggregation With Guarded Optimism

This story was written by David Kaplan.

As she settles into the GM job vacated by Vivian Schiller, who exited after being named CEO of NPR, Warren tells paidContent that she has been able to maintain her optimism. For example, despite the temptation to suspend new initiatives and wait until a more supportive ad market returns, Warren has faith the NYTimes.com's new experiments with aggregation will deliver. In particular, she'll be taking a close look at recently unveiled Times Extra feature and the current beta test of Times Widgets, which lets readers create custom apps for RSS feeds from various news sections. While the NYTCo has a lot more plans along those lines, Warren concedes that the economy will likely force the company to scale other experiments back a bit. "One of the unfortunate things about this downturn is that you can't do all the things you'd like to, whether it's your personal life or your professional life," Warren says. "You have to watch that budget. You can only do the things that are really important. But in a way, these constraints that we're operating under can help focus you. So if you have 15 things on the list, you do 10 or five. I choose to be an optimist. We've got so many things going right at the NYTimes, like audience figures. There is unprecedented demand for our product. I see the downturn as cyclical. We'll get out of it. I don't know how long it will take, but once we do, we'll continue to thrive as we have in the past." More on her new combined role, Monster.com and Times Extra after the jump.

-- Tip-toeing into aggregation: As for assessing what its social media focus has been contributing in readers and advertisers, Warren says she'll be putting steps in place that let NYTCo measure how the users feel about these features over time, especially how much usage initiatives like Times Extra actually gets. Warren: "We'll also consider how we can monetize it and how it adds to the site. We have a very loyal audience and it should be their habit to come and check us first to see who else is doing something interesting. That's kind of the idea behind our tip-toeing into aggregation."

-- Two for one: After Schiller decided to leave, Warren said NYT execs simply felt it made sense to combine the NYTimes.com's GM duties with Warren's existing advertising oversight. Asked about the hardest part of bridging the two dutiesaside from the website, she is responsible for ad sales of The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and NY-based classical FM radio station WQXR Warren said, "Managing the scheduling conflicts is a big one and we're going to work that out down the road. But the expanded responsibilities really just encompass things I've already had to think about; that includes my knowledge of the ad market both for print and online. It includes understanding our customers' needs and how to monetize the NYT's content, both for the short-term and long-term. It's no surprise that next year will be difficult. We're in the midst of an unpecedented change in the economy. Having someone like me and the advertising department more involved in thinking about the future of the website is critical right now."

-- NYT's luxury: Most newspapers have been trying to look beyond their traditional stable of advertisers during the downturn. The WSJ has been broadening its coverage to compete more directly with the NYT since Rupert Murdoch took over parent Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) a year ago. More recently, the WSJ has set its sites on peeling off luxury advertisers from the NYT's website and print pages. But when it comes to fending off the encroachment into the luxury marketers, Warren said that the company's history with those marketers and the kinds of readers they want to reach will hold. "We've always competed with the Wall St. Journal. And yes, Mr. Murdoch has made no secret that he is envious of the relationships that we enjoy with retail and luxury marketers. So yes, WSJ's overtures have kept us on our toes. But beyond that, you have to look at why these marketers have relied on us for so long. It's because we have deep and long commitments to the content that matters most to the audience these advertisers want to reach. With all due respect for what WSJ has done lately, they don't have that history. They have a magazine that has come out twice. We have 15 issues of T Magazine and two sections a week devoted to style. We cover every major fashion show. So it starts with our competitive reporting advantages. Plus, we still reach many more affluent women, who influence the purchases of others." (The NYT hasn't been unscathed: the paper halted publication of its Play magazine this fall.)

-- Not hiring for new help wanteds: At the UBS Global Media and Communications conference last week, execs from Media General (NYSE: MEG) and E.W. Scripps (NYSE: SSP) expressed gratitude for their partnership with the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium and Hot Jobs for boosting online revenue, while Gannett (NYSE: GCI) praised CareerBuilder for the same. I told Warren that it seemed that NYTCo has been quiet about its similar partnership with Monster.com lately and asked if the company might consider another recruitment site partner down the road. Warren was adamant that NYTCo's deal with Monster is "meeting all our expectations." Still, she was vague about what exactly those expectations are. Warren: "It's really hard to evaluate it right now, in the midst of the economic downturn. So it's impossible to separate out how Monster is doing, while accounting for the unusual circumstances we're in. We do try to get a sense of how it looks, looking at long-term trends. And when we do that, it really does appear to be hitting all the targets. I don't know what the others are saying about their relationships with other job sites."

By David Kaplan