Alex Hardiman's great-grandmother founded one of the first television stations in the Midwest in the 1950s.
“She founded one of the very first TV stations in the Midwest in the nineteen fifties.”
Person
Alex Hardiman
1 episodes · 20 quoted claims
To bring television to South Dakota and North Dakota, Alex Hardiman's great-grandmother had to build a chain of microwave transmitters.
“one of the first things she had to do to really bring TV to South Dakota and to North Dakota was to erect a chain of microwave transmitters.”
Alex Hardiman says she is technically the first chief product officer of The New York Times, and that the newspaper is one of the company's best products.
“So I am technically the first chief product officer. But when you think about one of the best products that the New York Times has ever made, it's the newspaper.”
Alex Hardiman worked at The New York Times from 2006 to 2016, leading its mobile team at a time when the company had no mobile presence.
“I was there from 2006 to 2016, and it was a period of really deep transformation for the company. I was leading our mobile team, and back in 2006, we had no presence whatsoever on mobile.”
In 2016 Alex Hardiman joined Meta to lead a team helping micro sellers in low-bandwidth parts of India get online and transact through social commerce.
“It was 2016, and I decided to go to Meta to lead a team where we were helping micro sellers in low bandwidth parts of India come online for the first time and transact using social commerce”
Alex Hardiman returned to The New York Times in late 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“that's when I ultimately found myself back, uh, at the New York Times in late 2019, right before the pandemic.”
About ten years before the interview, The New York Times was print-first and advertising-first, with about a million digital subscribers and no clear path to growth.
“we were print first, we were advertising first, and to be honest, we didn't have a really clear path for growth. We had about a million digital subscribers at the time.”
Alex Hardiman says The New York Times is closing in on about 12 million subscribers and has more than doubled its newsroom to over 2,600 journalists.
“We're now closing in on about 12 million subscribers. We've more than doubled our newsroom now to over 2,600 journalists.”
The New York Times chose to be subscription-first and destination-first, and built proprietary software to prioritize direct relationships with subscribers.
“we chose to be subscription first and destination first. And we decided to build proprietary technology and software that could prioritize those direct relationships”
Alex Hardiman says that at Meta after the 2016 election she worked on ranking accurate information, which Facebook's News Feed was not designed to do.
“How do we classify and algorithmically rank accurate, high-quality information? That's just not what News Feed was meant to do.”
After her first stint at The New York Times, Alex Hardiman worked at Meta for several years and then at The Atlantic before returning to the Times.
“Then I left and I went to Meta for several years, then went to the Atlantic and then came back to the New York Times.”
The New York Times has long used machine learning for ad targeting, its subscription model, dynamic paywalls and personalized recommendations.
“Machine learning is something that we have been using in our journalism and in our products now for a very long time to power ad targeting, to power our subscription model and our dynamic paywalls, personalized recommendations.”
Two New York Times reporters obtained over 500 hours of video recordings from the group behind Trump's campaign election lies, ahead of the 2024 election.
“what they got their hands on were over 500 hours of video recordings of the group that was behind this movement.”
The Times transcribed the video recordings into more than 5 million words and fed them into a large language model, which the reporters used to search for examples for their reporting.
“they fed the videos more than 5 million words of transcript into an LLM, which Ali and Nick, using their expert judgment, used to search and prompt”
Alex Hardiman says over 90% of The New York Times' news and opinion stories now have an automated voice mode.
“if you just open up the product on any given day, over 90% of our news and opinion stories now have an automated voice mode attached to it.”
NYT Cooking uses generative AI to automatically convert recipe ingredients from imperial to metric units for readers outside the US.
“historically, it was hard to cook with us because our recipes were in imperial units. And so we've been using generative AI to do very simple things like help automatically transfer ingredients from imperial to metric units.”
Alex Hardiman says over 50% of NYT Cooking's international users use the AI metric-conversion feature.
“We now have over 50% of our international users using this feature and just finding that the product helps them cook in a very easy and effective way.”
The New York Times' internal hackathon Maker Week produced over a hundred AI-based prototypes, though not all will be shipped.
“And we ended up with over a hundred different prototypes leveraging AI. Doesn't mean we're going to ship all of them”
Alex Hardiman says The New York Times announced a partnership with Amazon about two months before the interview, which she says provides appropriate compensation and controls over its content.
“we just announced, um, about two months ago, a partnership with Amazon, and they really recognize sustainable and fair value exchange that gives us appropriate compensation for our work”
Alex Hardiman says value exchange between publishers and AI platforms now includes licensing of news and co-development of products, beyond the older model of referral traffic.
“we're seeing licensing of high quality news and information. We're seeing co-development of products, right?”