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