• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 21, 2009

Amid broader cutbacks, is your company close to killing some marginal digital project? "Don't do it," advised Martin Nisenholtz, SVP of digital operations at The New York Times Company.

"If you ever find yourself in a recession, and you're thinking about killing a business that's burning a little cash, don't do it," he told attendees at OMMA Global on Monday.

And Nisenholtz should know. Two of The Times Co.'s three biggest digital fumbles -- by his estimation -- involved shutting down projects during the first dot-com bust: its Abuzz community-building and information-swapping service; and its locally focused New York Today news service. (The Times' third major mistake was failing to parlay its rich archives into a thriving search business, according to Nisenholtz.)

Failing to make The Times' stinker list -- again, according to Nisenholtz -- was the company's decision to nix its subscription service TimesSelect at the end of 2007. That is despite the fact that the company is presently reexamining the prospect of such a service.

"The tension that runs through all this is between open and closed networks," he said of the media industry at large. "We've been going back and forth on this project for a number of years ... We're taking a look at it again."

Echoing earlier remarks by News Corp.'s chief digital officer Jon Miller, Nisenholtz said "a dual business is just a better business; it just is."

Along with News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch recently declaring war on free ad-supported content online, Nisenholtz noted that there is "potentially a zeitgeist change going on," as "people realize that they might have to pay for some of this stuff in the future."

Where has the Times had success in the digital sphere? On Facebook, the publisher now has roughly half a million "friends," which is providing real "symmetry" for the Times' demographics, according to Nisenholtz. Indeed, 70% of that group are women, and nearly 85% of under the age of 35 -- atypical for the Times' online audience, which skews older and male, he said.

So far, Nisenholtz is also very happy with the Times' handling of Twitter. The company now has about 200 feeds on the micro-blogging service, while the main feed presently has about 2 million followers, and is adding about 15,000 followers a week, he said.

"It's a big deal," he said of Twitter, and the real-time Web. "We take it very seriously."