I wouldn't worry about the profit itself. It's important to NYT and their investors but not necessarily indicative of industry viability. More important (IMO)

I wouldn't worry about the profit itself. It's important to NYT and their investors but not necessarily indicative of industry viability. More important (IMO) is the number of subscribers, at total revenue, the total amount of money paid to NYT by subscribers. This is how much money is available to run NYT sustainably. They had 3.8m subscribers, with 2.9m digital only. Revenue is/was $415m for the quarter (1.65bn annualized). $100m (25%) of that was from digital subscriptions. They make more from ads. So... for the industry... I don't think this means much. It's an existence proof for paid subscriptions, as an important revenue source. It is not an existence proof for a paper funded primarily via subscriptions. A remarkable (maybe even exciting to some journalists) is that this represents a digital version of the print business model. It's a good thing in the sense that this promotes good content, and less hyperbole and clickbait. IDK how I feel about the desire to revive the print subcription model. The ability to share, read articles wherever they happen to be published, search the web for articles... paywalls break these. Maybe we need to go back to go forward, but this step feels like a regression... to me.