9 ms·

It's surprising to see how small they are. Only 3.8 million subscribers, and you have to imagine that some percentage of that barely reads their content. I won

It's surprising to see how small they are. Only 3.8 million subscribers, and you have to imagine that some percentage of that barely reads their content. I wonder if there's public numbers estimating how many people in total read the New York Times, and how it compares to emerging forms of media and entertainment like YouTube. One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern.

chriskanan 8y ago
The main page only gives the phone number, but in the policy they also provide an email address you can communicate with to cancel [1]. Still, that is pretty frustrating when it should just be a few clicks. I recently had to turn off cable internet, which took an hour long conversation as the only method available, whereas turning off the power to the apartment took about 30 seconds after logging into their platform. [1] https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015852367-Digital-subscriptions https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015852367-Digi...
comex 8y ago
They apparently have no fewer than 130 million monthly readers, though, according to a press release from last year: https://www.nytco.com/year-of-audience/ https://www.nytco.com/year-of-audience/ I̶ ̶g̶u̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶s̶p̶a̶p̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶d̶i̶v̶i̶d̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶.̶ [edit: that number isn't for physical newspapers, see replies]
- johnpowell 8y ago
  My mom delivers papers for the New York Times. The pay is garbage but she is old and getting Social Security. She likes to drive around and people-watch. She is also on the route that mostly delivers to Starbucks, Safeway, the airport, 7/11, and Albertsons. It is the best route since you just drop 20 papers on the doorstep of a Starbucks. She delivers about 500 papers a night. And she is just one of the 20+ drivers in our city of 180K people. So people do still buy them.
  - rsync 8y ago
    I buy the NYT from retail when I have the time and leisure to sit and read a newspaper. I like the fact that you can be in fairly provincial settings (small towns, etc.) but if there is a starbucks, the NYT will be for sale ... I note that it is frequently sold out at those starbucks locations (after lunch, at least) so it appears that others buy them there as well. FWIW, I am a sunday-only print version subscriber.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Their total print circulation is 2.1 million. [1] I always discount digital head counts since they can be grossly inflated with complete plausible deniability. And even when done well, it's probably accurate to do things like count somebody clicking on a single clickbait headline and then immediately leaving as a 'monthly reader' which creates a sort of dissonance between what we think of as monthly reader and what it actually means. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulat...
- manigandham 8y ago
  These numbers are usually completely off. There is no standard basis or reliable determination for them, and it's in every publishers interests to quote as high as they can get away with. Buying traffic from cheap ads can easily get you millions of "readers" who just hit the page from various IPs and leave some cookies around.
  - wyattpeak 8y ago
    That's not true. Basically all periodicals' circulation numbers are independently audited, because nobody will buy ads from them without an audited figure. Only the very smallest fly-by-night publications self-audit.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      Readers != circulation. Many hotels, coffee shops, airports, libraries, offices, and hundreds of other business subscribe, but it has nothing to do with who actually reads anything. Also that number is mostly quoting digital viewers, which are not audited at all.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  OT: how did you strike through? Not described in the formatdoc ... [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
  - yorwba 8y ago
    It's in Unicode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough#Unicode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough#Unicode
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - spiralx 8y ago
    This site will generate various Unicode versions of text - struck-through, bold, italic, bubble, all caps, script, Franktur and more: https://yaytext.com/ https://yaytext.com/
undreren 8y ago
> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern. This is illegal in Europe. By law, it has to be at least as easy to cancel subscriptions, as it is to buy them. I love Europe. :)
- dazc 8y ago
  I don't know of the legality but it is a common practice in Europe too.
  - undreren 8y ago
    Really? Where?
    - dazc 8y ago
      From my personal experience, just about everywhere. Just yesterday I wanted to cancel my AA membership (the motoring organisation, that is) and there was no other option but to phone. Pertinent to this thread I had a subscription with The Times and the only cancellation option was by phone. Anecdotally, it's very common with phone and utility providers too.
- zoidb 8y ago
  I recently tried to cancel my mcfit gym membership in Germany which was much more difficult than signing up. In this case you actually had to mail them a letter by post to cancel, where signing up was done on-site in 10minutes. Maybe you are referring to online subscriptions?
- anarazel 8y ago
  >> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern. FWIW, I have a "cancel subscription" link in my profile.
kayoone 8y ago
seems common even for reputable magazines. Canceling my Economist subscription also was quite a pain.
rahimnathwani 8y ago
If you live in San Francisco, you can access the NYT app without paying for a subscription, as your public library system already has a deal with NYT. It's a slight hassle as you need to go to a web site to get a code every 3 days, but it's probably preferable for those who don't read it every day: https://sfpl.libanswers.com/friendly.php?slug=faq/166904 https://sfpl.libanswers.com/friendly.php?slug=faq/166904
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Interesting. How does it verify that you're a SF resident?
  - mjcl 8y ago
    It doesn’t seem to ... that link worked from here in Fremont.
    - xaranke 8y ago
      Yeah, I seem to have gotten access from Seattle. Sweet!
      - Nitramp 8y ago
        Uh, you realize that abusing that probably means they'll have to cancel the public service at some point, right?
- jdoliner 8y ago
  Any idea how much NYTimes gets for this deal?
- bsimpson 8y ago
  Or you can just open an article in Incognito mode.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
They have a print circulation of 2.1 million. [1] For comparison PewDiePie has 65 million subscribers on YouTube with his most popular video in the past couple of weeks hitting 12 million views, with an average of around 4 million. I think this is why the media, in general and including the NYT, has become more partisan and more emotional. It's being used as a consumer retention mechanic. Impartial news done well is informative but not necessarily entertaining, which means it's probably not sustainable in the current zeitgeist of America. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulat...
- matt4077 8y ago
  I'm quite sure if you add up all the unique people who read an article on nytimes.com, or watched one of their videos, they are still slightly ahead of most youtube stars. I also tend to discount arguments that the NYTimes has shifted its tone due to economic pressure. Journalists, even some I know at lesser publications, consider it a point of pride to always do the opposite of what corporate management tells them to do. While the CEO can obviously redecorate the foyer etc., it's almost unheard of for management to get involved in editorial decisions. I would attribute the NYT's changes to a general trend towards colloquial style (i. e. casual fridays). The Republicans' turn towards destructive populism has also made it far harder to pretend it's just business-as-usual.
ehsankia 8y ago
I canceled mine last week exactly because of those dark patterns. They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me. I'd love to support them, but those practices don't belong in 2018. EDIT: Oh, looks like the cancellation didn't go through and they charged me for one more month, sweet. I might just go to my bank and tell them to block the source. Or even better, I may have found a trick. You can switch your payment to Paypal, and then Paypal let's you block/cancel reccuring payment. Let's see if that works.
- jagger27 8y ago
  The PayPal trick worked for me.
- unixhero 8y ago
  Watch out. There may be dragons with that PayPal approach. Although ingenious, and I commend that, you have achieved to end the payments but you have not correctly ended the contract. You may still be liable for the subscription fees, although you're not paying. Probably best to call and terminate the contract the right way.
  - gonvaled 8y ago
    He has already called them and terminated the contract. They have just not processed the request. Not paying is a sensible path in this case I would say.
    - unixhero 8y ago
      So, no dragons then. Lol.
    - ataturk 8y ago
      You can checkout but you can never leave.
- cm2187 8y ago
  That’s why I don’t complain that much when my bank wants to replace my card every 18 months or so because of whatever fraud concern they have. A minor inconvenience but the benefit is that it automatically terminates all the subscriptions to services I don’t really care about or that I forgot I even had.
cstrat 8y ago
Yup I subscribed, but unsubscribed after a couple weeks after I saw that. Pretty scummy way to handle un-subscriptions.
thirdsun 8y ago
> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern. They let me cancel via chat a few months ago. Obviously I'd have prefered the press of a button to cancel, but even via chat it was a quick and painless affair.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  I canceled via chat last week and was shocked at how painless it was.
- patorjk 8y ago
  I'd heard the same story about how hard it was to cancel, but I was also able to cancel through a chat on their website a couple months ago. It was quick and easy.
matt4077 8y ago
Far more than 3.8 people actually read the NYT. First, because it is often handed around in families/at work, or left in a subway for the next passenger to read. And everyone else gets to read or hear about the Time's work the next day, when every other news outlet copies their work. Nobody appreciates the value of journalism, because we feel inundated in it. But it's only copying and distribution that are free. When you try following everything back to its original source, it's a surprisingly small number of publications doing most of the work.
PakG1 8y ago
Wall Street Journal was the same when I wanted to cancel my trial online subscription. I imagine that a lot of newspapers are similar now.
628C6l0 8y ago
It's also very hard to cancel even by calling. When I cancelled my subscription last year, it wasted twenty minutes of my time even though I was firm throughout. The retaining person at one point even insulted me when I didn't catch something he said and said excuse me could you say that again - his response was to start doing an exaggerated accent of what he assumes to be my race (based on the name).

chriskanan 8y ago

The main page only gives the phone number, but in the policy they also provide an email address you can communicate with to cancel [1]. Still, that is pretty frustrating when it should just be a few clicks. I recently had to turn off cable internet, which took an hour long conversation as the only method available, whereas turning off the power to the apartment took about 30 seconds after logging into their platform. [1] https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015852367-Digital-subscriptions https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015852367-Digi...

comex 8y ago

They apparently have no fewer than 130 million monthly readers, though, according to a press release from last year: https://www.nytco.com/year-of-audience/ https://www.nytco.com/year-of-audience/ I̶ ̶g̶u̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶s̶p̶a̶p̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶d̶i̶v̶i̶d̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶.̶ [edit: that number isn't for physical newspapers, see replies]

johnpowell 8y ago
My mom delivers papers for the New York Times. The pay is garbage but she is old and getting Social Security. She likes to drive around and people-watch. She is also on the route that mostly delivers to Starbucks, Safeway, the airport, 7/11, and Albertsons. It is the best route since you just drop 20 papers on the doorstep of a Starbucks. She delivers about 500 papers a night. And she is just one of the 20+ drivers in our city of 180K people. So people do still buy them.
- rsync 8y ago
  I buy the NYT from retail when I have the time and leisure to sit and read a newspaper. I like the fact that you can be in fairly provincial settings (small towns, etc.) but if there is a starbucks, the NYT will be for sale ... I note that it is frequently sold out at those starbucks locations (after lunch, at least) so it appears that others buy them there as well. FWIW, I am a sunday-only print version subscriber.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Their total print circulation is 2.1 million. [1] I always discount digital head counts since they can be grossly inflated with complete plausible deniability. And even when done well, it's probably accurate to do things like count somebody clicking on a single clickbait headline and then immediately leaving as a 'monthly reader' which creates a sort of dissonance between what we think of as monthly reader and what it actually means. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulat...
manigandham 8y ago
These numbers are usually completely off. There is no standard basis or reliable determination for them, and it's in every publishers interests to quote as high as they can get away with. Buying traffic from cheap ads can easily get you millions of "readers" who just hit the page from various IPs and leave some cookies around.
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  That's not true. Basically all periodicals' circulation numbers are independently audited, because nobody will buy ads from them without an audited figure. Only the very smallest fly-by-night publications self-audit.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Readers != circulation. Many hotels, coffee shops, airports, libraries, offices, and hundreds of other business subscribe, but it has nothing to do with who actually reads anything. Also that number is mostly quoting digital viewers, which are not audited at all.
gonvaled 8y ago
OT: how did you strike through? Not described in the formatdoc ... [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
- yorwba 8y ago
  It's in Unicode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough#Unicode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough#Unicode
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- spiralx 8y ago
  This site will generate various Unicode versions of text - struck-through, bold, italic, bubble, all caps, script, Franktur and more: https://yaytext.com/ https://yaytext.com/

undreren 8y ago

> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern. This is illegal in Europe. By law, it has to be at least as easy to cancel subscriptions, as it is to buy them. I love Europe. :)

dazc 8y ago
I don't know of the legality but it is a common practice in Europe too.
- undreren 8y ago
  Really? Where?
  - dazc 8y ago
    From my personal experience, just about everywhere. Just yesterday I wanted to cancel my AA membership (the motoring organisation, that is) and there was no other option but to phone. Pertinent to this thread I had a subscription with The Times and the only cancellation option was by phone. Anecdotally, it's very common with phone and utility providers too.
zoidb 8y ago
I recently tried to cancel my mcfit gym membership in Germany which was much more difficult than signing up. In this case you actually had to mail them a letter by post to cancel, where signing up was done on-site in 10minutes. Maybe you are referring to online subscriptions?
anarazel 8y ago
>> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern. FWIW, I have a "cancel subscription" link in my profile.

kayoone 8y ago

seems common even for reputable magazines. Canceling my Economist subscription also was quite a pain.

rahimnathwani 8y ago

If you live in San Francisco, you can access the NYT app without paying for a subscription, as your public library system already has a deal with NYT. It's a slight hassle as you need to go to a web site to get a code every 3 days, but it's probably preferable for those who don't read it every day: https://sfpl.libanswers.com/friendly.php?slug=faq/166904 https://sfpl.libanswers.com/friendly.php?slug=faq/166904

CamperBob2 8y ago
Interesting. How does it verify that you're a SF resident?
- mjcl 8y ago
  It doesn’t seem to ... that link worked from here in Fremont.
  - xaranke 8y ago
    Yeah, I seem to have gotten access from Seattle. Sweet!
    - Nitramp 8y ago
      Uh, you realize that abusing that probably means they'll have to cancel the public service at some point, right?
jdoliner 8y ago
Any idea how much NYTimes gets for this deal?
bsimpson 8y ago
Or you can just open an article in Incognito mode.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

They have a print circulation of 2.1 million. [1] For comparison PewDiePie has 65 million subscribers on YouTube with his most popular video in the past couple of weeks hitting 12 million views, with an average of around 4 million. I think this is why the media, in general and including the NYT, has become more partisan and more emotional. It's being used as a consumer retention mechanic. Impartial news done well is informative but not necessarily entertaining, which means it's probably not sustainable in the current zeitgeist of America. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulat...

matt4077 8y ago
I'm quite sure if you add up all the unique people who read an article on nytimes.com, or watched one of their videos, they are still slightly ahead of most youtube stars. I also tend to discount arguments that the NYTimes has shifted its tone due to economic pressure. Journalists, even some I know at lesser publications, consider it a point of pride to always do the opposite of what corporate management tells them to do. While the CEO can obviously redecorate the foyer etc., it's almost unheard of for management to get involved in editorial decisions. I would attribute the NYT's changes to a general trend towards colloquial style (i. e. casual fridays). The Republicans' turn towards destructive populism has also made it far harder to pretend it's just business-as-usual.

ehsankia 8y ago

I canceled mine last week exactly because of those dark patterns. They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me. I'd love to support them, but those practices don't belong in 2018. EDIT: Oh, looks like the cancellation didn't go through and they charged me for one more month, sweet. I might just go to my bank and tell them to block the source. Or even better, I may have found a trick. You can switch your payment to Paypal, and then Paypal let's you block/cancel reccuring payment. Let's see if that works.

jagger27 8y ago
The PayPal trick worked for me.
unixhero 8y ago
Watch out. There may be dragons with that PayPal approach. Although ingenious, and I commend that, you have achieved to end the payments but you have not correctly ended the contract. You may still be liable for the subscription fees, although you're not paying. Probably best to call and terminate the contract the right way.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  He has already called them and terminated the contract. They have just not processed the request. Not paying is a sensible path in this case I would say.
  - unixhero 8y ago
    So, no dragons then. Lol.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    You can checkout but you can never leave.
cm2187 8y ago
That’s why I don’t complain that much when my bank wants to replace my card every 18 months or so because of whatever fraud concern they have. A minor inconvenience but the benefit is that it automatically terminates all the subscriptions to services I don’t really care about or that I forgot I even had.

cstrat 8y ago

Yup I subscribed, but unsubscribed after a couple weeks after I saw that. Pretty scummy way to handle un-subscriptions.

thirdsun 8y ago

> One criticism of New York Times that I've read online is that they won't allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but that's a pretty questionable dark pattern. They let me cancel via chat a few months ago. Obviously I'd have prefered the press of a button to cancel, but even via chat it was a quick and painless affair.

creaghpatr 8y ago
I canceled via chat last week and was shocked at how painless it was.
patorjk 8y ago
I'd heard the same story about how hard it was to cancel, but I was also able to cancel through a chat on their website a couple months ago. It was quick and easy.

matt4077 8y ago

Far more than 3.8 people actually read the NYT. First, because it is often handed around in families/at work, or left in a subway for the next passenger to read. And everyone else gets to read or hear about the Time's work the next day, when every other news outlet copies their work. Nobody appreciates the value of journalism, because we feel inundated in it. But it's only copying and distribution that are free. When you try following everything back to its original source, it's a surprisingly small number of publications doing most of the work.

PakG1 8y ago

Wall Street Journal was the same when I wanted to cancel my trial online subscription. I imagine that a lot of newspapers are similar now.

628C6l0 8y ago

It's also very hard to cancel even by calling. When I cancelled my subscription last year, it wasted twenty minutes of my time even though I was firm throughout. The retaining person at one point even insulted me when I didn't catch something he said and said excuse me could you say that again - his response was to start doing an exaggerated accent of what he assumes to be my race (based on the name).