The NYT’s next era isn’t about news - The Hustle

NYT's flat revenue masks how much the business has fundamentally changed from ad supported to subscription supported.

Today, NY Times boasts 6.5m subscribers.

“A subscription business model leads towards being a paper for a particular group and a particular audience and not for the broadest public,” Peretti said. He’s alluding, in part, to the theory that the Times’s subscriber base wants to read a certain kind of news and opinion — middle/left of center, critical of Donald Trump, etc. — and that strayin... See more

But there is a lot of work ahead of us on the operational side. We need to continuously deliver an amazing product to consumers worth paying for. No one balks at paying for a cell phone, gym membership, Netflix, BabyYoda+, Peloton and every other subscription. Why should they balk at paying for news if the product is actually important to them?

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.

NYT now has 4x more subscribers than they did at their print era peak. Their financials are strong.