“We think that there are many, many, many, many people-millions of people all around the world-who want what The New York Times offers,” says Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor. To hit that mark, the Times is embarking on an ambitious plan inspired by the strategies of Netflix, Spotify, and HBO: invest heavily in a core offering (which, for the Times, is journalism) while continuously adding new online services and features (from personalized fitness advice and interactive newsbots to virtual reality films) so that a subscription becomes indispensable to the lives of its existing subscribers and more attractive to future ones. It’s to transform the Times’ digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever.
NEW YORK TIMES WIRECUTTER LOGO FREE
The main goal isn’t simply to maximize revenue from advertising-the strategy that keeps the lights on and the content free at upstarts like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vox. Sulzberger, like more than three dozen other executives and journalists I interviewed and shadowed at the Times, is working on the biggest strategic shift in the paper’s 165-year history, and he believes it will strengthen its bottom line, enhance the quality of its journalism, and secure a long and lasting future.
But there could be another reason for his confidence. “No,” he says, equally point-blank, which is exactly the party line one expects to hear from the deputy publisher of the Times-a recent appointment that put him next in line to lead the paper when the current publisher and chair, his father, retires. He looks the picture of a young tech executive-close-cropped hair, tortoiseshell glasses, considered stubble-and I ask him point-blank if he worries about whether The New York Times will ever cease to be a fact of life. A few blocks-but more like a century-away from that old building, Sulzberger sits in his office in the newish glass-and-steel-lattice-encased headquarters of the Times. It’s been sold off and sliced up, and the top two floors are presently occupied by Snapchat, while the bottom two were bought by Kushner Companies, the family business of Jared Kushner, son-in-law extraordinaire of Donald J. The Times building is still there, except it’s not the Times building anymore. His memories are hazy, perhaps because he’s 36 now and it was a long time ago, and perhaps because that building, like the Times, was always just there, a fact of life.
This was the early ’80s, when The New York Times was nothing but ink on paper and was printed in the same building where the journalism was created. He often visited for a few minutes before taking a trip to the newsroom on the third floor, all typewriters and moldering stacks of paper, and then he’d sometimes go down to the subbasement to take in the oily scents and clanking sounds of the printing press. He was young, he says, no older than 6, when he shuffled through the brass-plated revolving doors of the old concrete hulk on 43rd Street and boarded the elevator up to his father’s and grandfather’s offices. Afghan Interpreter Who Helped Rescue Biden in 2008 Left Behind After U.S.The New York Times Claws Its Way Into the Futureīy Gabriel Snyder | photographs by James Day 2.12.17Īrthur Gregg Sulzberger doesn’t remember the first time he visited the family business.Troops Leave Afghanistan After Nearly 20 Years Unfinished Tractors, Pickup Trucks Pile Up as Components Run Short.At the Times, the core news product powered a subscription boom during the Trump years and the early stages of the pandemic, but that growth has slowed in recent quarters.Īn expanded version of this story appears on WSJ.com.
The Times and most other major news organizations have put a greater emphasis on generating subscription revenue over the past several years, in part because of the uncertainty of the online advertising market. Wirecutter, which the Times Company bought in 2016, is a consumer guide that reviews everything from cable modems to cat litter. The Times, in its digital incarnation, is seeking to serve some auxiliary needs that traditional print newspapers once served, including by providing recipes and games and by helping users decide what products to buy, said David Perpich, head of the Times’ stand-alone products group.
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