New York Times, UserLand and Weblogs
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 by Dave Winer.
The New York Times and weblogs 
In January I had a dinner in San Francisco with Martin Nisenholtz, the CEO of New York Times Digital, the company that produces the Times' website and other Web publications including Boston.Com.
I proposed that we work with the Times to help bring their content into the weblog world and vice versa. I didn't expect him to go for it, I was surprised to find that he was thinking this way too.
We shook hands and by mid-March we had our new XML-based technology working. A few weeks later New York Times headlines are flowing reliably to Radio UserLand desktops through its News Aggregator, and from there to the minds of the people who write the weblogs.
Today, with pride, we are formally announcing this technology to Radio 8 users around the world.
The announcement
NEW YORK, April 10, 2002 - NYTimes.com announced today that it had reached an agreement with UserLand Software to distribute content from NYTimes.com to the network of Radio UserLand 8.0 desktop content management users. This new feature allows New York Times links to flow, with reader annotation, through the growing network of ìWeblogî sites published with Radio 8.
Weblogs are continuously updated news-oriented Web sites that are published by experts in technology, education, and in corporations. This new form of publishing, also known as ìmicrocontent,î relies on Web services technology such as XML as well as other technologies pioneered by UserLand including RSS, XML-RPC, and SOAP.
ìWeblogs are a new form of journalism, practiced by hundreds of thousands of individuals for small audiences, sometimes as small as a classroom or a corporate workgroup,î said Dave Winer, CEO of UserLand Software. ìThe New York Times is a trusted source for news and analysis, and partnering with them will help our network to grow beyond early adopters and technology aficionados.î
The feeds from NYTimes.com will add to UserLandís flow of content in business and technology news, and will develop important new areas including the arts, international news, national and New York regional news, science, politics, travel and education.
ìWe are pleased to offer Weblog creators the ability to post headlines from NYTimes.com with UserLandís software,î said Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital. ìWeblogs are an increasingly popular form of self-publishing within a highly influential community, and are therefore an important distribution channel for our high-quality content.î