BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti on why he bought HuffPost and why the New York Times can’t be "the paper of record"

The apparent limitation of the ad-supported media business model is that there will never be enough traffic to satisfy the beast. But while subscription revenue is stickier and gives creators more runway and short-term security, eventually the flame that started any new project will be extinguished. A new muse will need to be found.

The New York Times will triumph financially, dramatically so, and utterly fail as an intellectual institution, at least by its former standards. The editorial branding will be august pronouncements about ‘the paper of record’, but the business model is pure Netflix: All The News Fit To Binge.

At the core of this is a debate on whether The New York Times, The Washington Post and others are failing the American people by pushing more content behind the paywall.

After seeing their revenues steadily decline from 2006 through 2014, the Times transformed its editorial approach to survive in this new economic world: they pivoted focus to a subscription model. They like to frame this one way: “We believe that the more sound business strategy for The Times is to provide journalism so strong that several million ... See more