Q&A with Dorothy McGivney, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The New York Times

This week, we caught up with Dorothy, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The New York Times who was hired last November to help build a travel standalone product and recently launched “Notes From Our Homes to Yours” — a new Times initiative where writers and editors share suggestions as they stay at home (check out round two of the project here). Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.

Tell me about your role.

I am an entrepreneur-in-residence at The New York Times. I joined in November 2019 and was hired specifically to explore how the Times can launch a standalone product in the travel space. The role reports into David Perpich. He’s the head of standalone products and also sits on the Times’ board of directors. There’s currently another entrepreneur-in-residence at the Times who’s working on a product in the kids space.

I’ve always been passionate about travel and previously had my own travel newsletter startup called Jauntsetter. I also worked in the tech and startup world for 20 years and love building new products. I was actually working at Google when they purchased what would become Google Docs.

So, when I saw this role pop up, I was very excited. It was a dream job — I could build a product in a space I’m super interested in and for a newspaper I have read almost every day for most of my life.

You recently launched “Notes From Our Homes to Yours.” Can you tell me a bit about how that came into fruition?

“Notes From Our Homes to Yours” was actually a side experiment that emerged from some of my previous travel research.

When I first joined, I started conducting research with my team in New York, New Orleans, and Detroit on people’s travel habits and needs. We were actually putting together some product directions when COVID-19 hit. This obviously impacted my role because people aren’t traveling the way they used to. That said, I wanted to see how we could apply some of the research I had done to something short-term while people are stuck at home.

One of the main trends we observed during our travel research was that people like using Google Docs to consolidate and share their recommendations and build itineraries. People preferred and trusted personal recommendations as opposed to institutional recommendations. There wasn’t a lot of positive sentiment for user-review sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor.

We figured that people were using Google Docs to collect and share recommendations in general, for things outside of travel. Prior to COVID-19, we had been thinking about having our journalists share travel recommendations and suggestions. For example, how could the Times share Sam Sifton’s recommendations of where to eat in New York or London in a scalable manner that also felt personal? Could we use Google Docs to achieve that? When the pandemic began, the question became: how can we use Google Docs and our newsroom talent to help readers navigate the lockdown? We were actually seeing some of our writers and editors going off platform to share their personal stories and recommendations.

Inspired by this, we wanted to give our journalists a medium that was intimate, communal, and alive. The cool thing about a Google Doc is that it’s never finalized. Journalists have the option of going through and updating their recommendations without having to go through the publishing process even though an editor does review the documents before they are published.

Google Docs can also offer users some serendipity, which feels like it’s missing these days while we isolate at home. There’s a bit of a thrill as a user when you can see a reporter or editor actually typing in the document. We’re hoping to actually experiment with having editors and writers leave comments on each other’s documents to introduce some dialogue.

And, how serendipitous it is that you were working at Google when the company first purchased what would become Google Docs and eventually Google Spreadsheets.

Yeah, I’ve always thought that Google Docs is a brilliant collaborative tool. I was actually messaging the co-creator of Google Docs, Jonathan Rochelle, about the project. It was really fun to see all my professional worlds coming together full circle.

Can you tell me about how journalists have responded to this initiative?

We’ve had a lot of support so far. I’ve noticed that without even asking writers and editors to update their recommendations that many are already doing that. Michael Kimmelman, our architecture critic uploaded a recording of him playing Bach one weekend. One journalist told me she was excited about being able to edit something after publishing it. Another one was excited that we used gmail account profile photos as opposed to the profile pictures on The New York Times’ site.

Google Docs takes away the formal mantle of The New York Times. It’s a cool way for our writers and editors to share their personalities in a way that we often only really see on Twitter. It’s a safe playground for them.

What metrics are you using to measure success?

Our aim was to understand engagement, specifically sustained engagement. This is the first time The New York Times hosted a bunch of google docs and spreadsheets. Our questions were very basic: Do people understand the objective? Are they clicking into the documents? And, if so, do they remain in the document? How are they now perceiving the brand?

One of our first responses we saw was someone saying they spent 45 minutes poking around the documents. Anecdotally, some users left comments thanking us for pulling back the curtain and humanizing our reporters.

How do you see this project fitting within The New York Times’ news and content strategy?

With all the news on the pandemic, we’ve been exploring counter-programming options as a way of providing readers a comforting and engaging space. I think “Notes From Our Homes to Yours” really fits into that category. We weren’t thinking too much about where it was going to live, our goal was to just get it up and see if it resonated with our readers. It’s really as simple as you see it. Our design team was able to quickly create a new article format to turn the piece into an interactive of sorts. And, because Sam Sifton was overseeing “At Home” we felt that that would be a good home.

What next steps are you looking to explore?

We currently don’t have commenting turned on for security reasons but one thing I’d like to figure out is how to make the Docs a place where readers and users can engage in a safe and scalable way.

I’d also be interested in doing some user research on how people are experiencing the documents based on demographic. For example, how easy is it for people in their 70s to navigate the Docs?

To pivot away from “Notes From Our Homes to Yours,” how else are you thinking about repurposing your travel research?

100% of the people we spoke to told us that food was driving their travel in some way. People might not have anything booked for a city, but knew exactly where they were going to eat. We started to think about what might the Times do that relates to not just travel, but food.

The Times actually invented the modern restaurant review. But, I was interested in how we might serve users and readers planning trips beyond just restaurant reviews. When the coronavirus began, I became interested in off-premise dining recommendations — for instance, take out. I envision this all being hyperlocal information that can be shared with others. For example, we might ask reporters to share local neighborhood recommendations in a Google Doc as places begin to reopen. I’d also be interested in finding a way to layer in community intelligence so that we can leverage reader knowledge. For the Cooking app, they made a deliberate decision to not call the comments on recipes “comments,” but instead “notes.” It’s a section where readers can help each other out and it’s supposedly the nicest place on the internet.

You mention that people don’t like institutional recommendations. How are you thinking about keeping recommendations personal while still maintaining The New York Times stamp of approval?

The New York Times brand is trusted and respected. Luckily, the Times can leverage this trust in the recommendation space in a way that not many places can. As a medium, Google Docs feels informal and a lot more personal. I also think that personality-driven recommendations are key.

New York Magazine actually does a great job with this in their profiles. I purchased a Yeti mug after reading Gail Simmons’ interview in The Strategist and she said that it was the one thing she could not live without.

What’s something interesting that you’ve observed in the media space?

There’s a local blog called Greenpointers. They’ve been super on top of tracking local businesses reopening and local charities and have been sharing this information consistently on Instagram. They’re so scrappy, but they’re doing such an important service for the neighborhood through their Instagram stories.

Rapid Fire

What is your first read in the morning?

The Morning Briefing from The New York Times

What was the last book you consumed?

I just reread The Design Sprint

What job would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?

I love product work but I’m also a huge operations nerd (I’ve worn a COO hat before). I honestly love OKRs and (well done) 360 performance reviews and business planning.