Can Subscriptions Save All Media Companies, or Just the New York Times?
 

It’s hard not to feel some whiplash when reading news about the media business these days. After weeks of grim layoffs at former powerhouses like BuzzFeed and HuffPost, and a growing sense of doom about the industry among journalists, the New York Times came out yesterday and announced digital revenues of $709 million last year — an extremely impressive figure and a good indication that it will meet its ambitious goal of $800 million in digital revenue by the end of 2020. The strong figures come largely from the Times’ thriving digital subscription business, which grew 18 percent to $400 million; in a statement, Times Company CEO Mark Thompson announced the paper’s goal to grow to 10 million subscriptions by 2025. After hiring 120 newsroom employees last year, the Times now employs 1,600 journalists — a figure only slightly under the number of people laid off in January by BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company Verizon Media Group, Vice, and Gannett.

New York Times Subscription Revenue Is Mixed News for Media

I'm up to my neck with work right now but I'll take a second to respond. Thank you for posting this piece. I've been hearing about these media companies laying off people and it's been concerning to me as a publisher.

I guess the business model is changing to sell premium content. These bigger companies were running super bloated. They would just pump out content without much efficiency. It went as fast as you can and grab as much attention as you can.

I was looking at the ads around that article and they're using an Adsense type of ads and it's not re-targeting very well at all. I think Facebook is much better at retargeting and perhaps that's why they're grabbing a bigger piece of the advertising revenue.

As a publisher, I'm typically selling something that's probably why the returns are higher on the content. I'm looking forward to how things pan out...

400 million dollars in digital subscriptions..... hummmm Time for a news tube.

Journalism is dead...dead...its all about the clicks...it should now be called keywording and not journalism...

Maybe not so failing NYT?

I am a subscriber, I prefer real journalism with fact checking over a site called projectfreedom.whatever - run by a dude in a basement in whoknowswhere...

But I am fully aware that this probably makes me a minority here.

Oh yeah NYT... totally not biased. lmao.

No wonder why you stay ignorant. You're living in a god damn echo chamber.

Sweety, it's not the only paper I read, rest assured.

But you are an expert on echo chambers, I won't argue with you on that.

Oh sweaty, I'm sure your other sources are CNN & RawStory.com

Newspapers over the years have protected us from the unscrupulous. From Watergate to Vietnam to sex abuse etc. They needed skilled reporters able to work on a story for weeks even months and still get paid.

Once you reduce the ability to pay decent reporters for months to expose a scandal. The losers are the people.

Freedom of the press relies on a lucrative press. Stifle their ability and you keep them quieter.