NewsGuild, the labor organization representing the Wirecutter union, as well as staffers at BuzzFeed and The Daily Beast, echoed the sentiment. “This contract came to fruition because every single one of us held the line on what we deserve,” Kobos added.
Media can be a tumultuous environment, but we love what we do, so we organize to make it better,” Sarah Kobos, a Wirecutter senior photo editor, told The Daily Beast.
We have not only raised the bar for our members but for the industry as a whole. “I am so proud of what we as a union have accomplished. Overall, the company is barely managing to keep its head above water, and it is looking at what are expected to be significant cuts to the newsroom.With contract battles behind them, the union believes the deal is the result of its members’ persistent solidarity. The paper’s experiments with standalone apps haven’t really paid off in most cases, subscription growth is slowing, and both digital and print-advertising revenue are in decline. If it can do that effectively (which is obviously a question mark), the Times might be able to turn Wirecutter into the revenue engine for a growing digital unit, something it has very few of. The potential is that learning from Lam and what he’s been able to build at Wirecutter-with a tiny fraction of the number of staff the New York Times has-could help the paper learn and adapt that model to a whole range of different products and services such as food, fashion, etc.
And the paper already uses affiliate links in a number of places on its site, including books and theater reviews. The appeal for the New York Times isn’t necessarily how much revenue Wirecutter and Sweethome generate, since it’s probably not going to move the needle much at a company with annual revenues of about $1.6 billion. Instead, it earned money through “affiliate” links, which pay a referral fee when links to products are clicked on and a product is purchased. It hired professional reviewers to sample and test every major product in a specific category-headphones, cameras, disk drives, etc.-then picked one to recommend. Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter. Lam quit Gizmodo after five years of editing the site and driving it to new traffic heights-including the scoop of a lifetime, when he got his hands on a prototype of the iPhone 4, an event that led to a series of awkward personal calls from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs.īurned out by the never-ending race to boost traffic, Lam moved to Hawaii to surf, and in his spare time he started a small review site focused on gadgets, originally as part of a blog network called The Awl. When it comes to the what, The Wirecutter and sister site The Sweethome are technology and consumer-product review sites started by Brian Lam, a former editor of the tech site Gizmodo, which at one time was part of Nick Denton’s Gawker Media empire (which went bankrupt and was bought by Univision).
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