[Onavo]

NYT is an exception, or more specifically it's much bigger than most other news shops and has the luxury of having a large loyal customer base, a brand reputation to defend, and a full time business analysis and data science team to upkeep its excellence. Your local papers are barely scraping by and are mostly owned by hedge funds whose primary objective to squeeze the consumer via judicial usage of paywalls and clickbaits. A commitment to truth and deep investigative reporting for them does not keep the lights on. The other papers and magazines are all subsidized by billionaires or other vested interests. The price for those is indoctrination.

[bobthepanda]

Also NYT has spent a lot of time and energy into diversifying into things that are not news.

There is a subset of its customers that is only really paying for the games like the crossword. There is a subset only really paying for Cooking. etc.

[massysett]

Just like the old days, when people would subscribe to the daily newspaper for the crossword, the comics, the TV listings, the want ads, or the ads and coupons with the Sunday paper.

NYT is really just making the old newspaper model work in the new age, albeit with higher reliance on subscription revenue and less an ad revenue.

[Mtinie]

I’m reasonably sure that most of the national-level news media companies have been owned by millionaires (and now billionaires) for the last century. William Randolph Hearst, E.W. Scripps, the Ochs-Sulzberger family, Raoul H. Fleischmann, Cyrus H. K. Curtis are a few of the prominent wealthy owners of nationally-distributed news outlets and publications in 1925. Back farther to the Civil War you find more “independent” publications but it’s a challenge to determine which of them were privately owned by individuals of considerable wealth vs. those owned by their publishers who may or may not have been wealthy.

For a current breakdown, see: Index of News Media Ownership: https://futureofmedia.hsites.harvard.edu/index-us-mainstream...

[mejutoco]

> The problem is that nobody would pay for it

User "api" said "nobody", so that is enough to refute their point. Some people would might pay for it, it seems.

[thaumasiotes]

> NYT is an exception

> The other papers and magazines are all subsidized by billionaires or other vested interests.

How is the NYT an exception?

[insane_dreamer]

a large paid subscription base

[thaumasiotes]

That's no different from the other papers and magazines.

Paid subscriptions have never been a significant source of revenue to newspapers. They relied on advertisements, just like the websites that killed them.

[eddythompson80]

That's not entirely true for NYT as OP mentioned. NYT is 170 years old. They have been through many phases and models.

Luckily NYT is a public company and you can look up their revenue split on the SEC website going back to 1994. In 1994 they had 35% revenue from circulation vs 65% from ads. In 2021 it was 24% ads and 68% subscribers and 8% "Other"

[Applejinx]

That's creepy when you consider how much subscription to ALL newspapers has collapsed between 1994 and 2021.

[TylerE]

Tells you how hard advertising collapsed in the same time period. I was at a small chain of local papers from about '09-'13. I saw it first hand.

Classifieds used to be a cash cow... not EASY money nessesairly, it's made $20 or so at the time, but it was a lot of money. Things like apartments for rent or cars for sale.

Then craigslist came a long and killed that.

Similarly ads went from large purchases, often for very large placements (we'd do things like sell rights to entire sections for flat fees), went to Pay Per Impression models paying hundreths of a cent, with no guarantees or minimums.

[thaumasiotes]

The Washington Post is also a public company (before 2013). In their 2009 filing, they state that the newspaper's revenue (in 2008) was 51% ads, with the other 49% not attributed.

At that time operating expenses exceeded revenues by 25 million dollars, though this was not an immediate problem for them because they owned several other more profitable companies.

By contrast, in that same year the New York Times announced that they had managed to stave off insolvency by securing a large personal loan from Carlos Slim, who went on to become their biggest shareholder.

How are we distinguishing between these two newspapers? What's supposed to be "exceptional" about the New York Times?

[eddythompson80]

Why are you looking at 2009? Is it because you think it fits your narrative? What happened in 2008 I wonder that may cause companies to be struggling? NYT is a profitable company with majority of their income coming from paid subscriptions. Does that answer your question about how they are different or do you wanna check their revenue split and financials in 1928 too?

A business secured a loan from a billionaire after the GFC and paid it off in 6 years. The billionaire also acquired a significant position in the business that he has mostly exited with a significant profit generated from the business subscription model. More on this crazy story as it unfolds at 11

It's no different -> Paid subscriptions have never been a significant source of revenue to newspapers -> well, they were struggling in 2009 -> ...

[JackFr]

> by securing a large personal loan from Carlos Slim, who went on to become their biggest shareholder.

NYT has dual class shares. It’s run by the Sulzberger family despite Slim’s stake.

They are rich, but not billionaires.