[VLM]

Classic narrowcasting mistake that dying companies make.

Statista claims 2.3 million digital subscribers. NYT is trying to milk that 2.3M for everything they got, squeeze the last drops of blood from the stone while they still can.

That's a great way to go out of business, when 99.97% of the world population is not your customer and your squeezing labors are not going to encourage them to sign up.

If you hyperoptimize to squeeze every drop out of a small customer base, eventually you end up with something like legacy TV networks where 99% of the population won't watch a show even for free, and the tighter the target focus on an ever shrinking legacy audience, the smaller the audience gets, until the whole house of cards collapses.

Its similar to the slice of pie argument; there are many business strategies that make a pie slice "better" at the price of shrinking it, and eventually the paper-thin slice disappears from the market because the enormous number of the employees can't eat anymore, but that certainly will be the most hyperoptimized slice of pie ever made, right before it entirely disappears.

NYT is going to have a truly amazing spy product right before it closes.