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It seems to me that the only mainstream newspaper to figure out a workable solution so far is NYT. And their solution was games. One of these days that will b
by rootusrootus 8mo ago
It seems to me that the only mainstream newspaper to figure out a workable solution so far is NYT. And their solution was games. One of these days that will be all that remains and people will forget what the NYT acronym stands for aside from Wordle.
- reliabilityguy 8mo agoNYT makes money from games?
- snapcaster 8mo agoI work with many people who pay for the subscription to play the games
- rootusrootus 8mo agoI don't have numbers in front of me, but yes, NYT has basically said exactly that. Their games portfolio is a major driver of digital subscriptions.
- shimman 8mo agoI wouldn't be surprised to learn their recipes also drive a decent amount of revenue too. Their physical cookbooks are top notch (big fan of their no recipe recipe cookbook).
- barkerja 8mo agoTheir recipe and cocktail repository is excellent. It's a large part while I'm a subscriber.
- bigstrat2003 8mo agoI'm really confused. What is a "no recipe recipe cookbook"?
- shimman 8mo agoIt's this one: https://www.amazon.com/York-Times-Cooking-No-Recipe-Recipes/dp/1984858475 https://www.amazon.com/York-Times-Cooking-No-Recipe-Recipes/... Basically tells you have to make various dishes saying without specific amounts and just going more on feel and what tastes good. I love this tip about adding anchovies to pasta sauce to get a very rich flavor on the cheap. Honestly like to think of it as the "stoned but competent" cookbook because the directions are quite easy to follow and come out tasty :) Also the material they used for the "flexible" edition is really nice to use as you cook.
- rootusrootus 8mo ago> Basically tells you have to make various dishes saying without specific amounts and just going more on feel and what tastes good. This is how my mom taught me to cook, and she decided (unilaterally I assume) that it was the definition of gourmet cooking. I went a lot of years thinking that was the literal definition, ha. Though in retrospect, it is not 100% wrong, and I don't think she was joking when she said it.
- bigstrat2003 8mo agoThat is a super interesting book concept, thank you for the link!
- amdsn 8mo agoI'm not sure about all of the ones they host, but for the crossword app you need to subscribe for full access.
- simonw 8mo agoThere's a joke in the news industry that the NYT is a games company with a loss-making news organization attached to it as a side-project.
- IncreasePosts 8mo agoThe modern NYT has been described as a games company that occasionally engages in journalism
- paulcole 8mo agoWho has described them this way?
- IncreasePosts 8mo agoThis user: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=IncreasePosts https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=IncreasePosts
- burkaman 8mo agoThey have a games-only subscription option: https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/games/ https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/games/
- carefulfungi 8mo agoTheir recently shipped scrabble clone is excellent! One of the cleanest scrabble / words-with-friends implementations I've played.
- rootusrootus 8mo agoYeah I'm hooked on it for the moment. The previous games are entertaining once a day, and we share results amongst our family for fun, but the Crossplay game is a lot of fun head-to-head.
- Beijinger 8mo agoI mean, why not? Sometimes it seems to me that airlines make their money not on flights but on branded Credit Cards.
- dwd 8mo agoFrequent flyer points are where they make their money. So much so that many airlines would run at a loss just flying passengers. All their partners hand over real cash for points to give their customers, that often either expire or are never redeemed. I think it was the Economist that stated that airlines operate as unregulated banks. Flying people around is a secondary thing they do.
- softwaredoug 8mo agoThe Atlantic, WSJ, The Economist, Politico all come to mind as profitable. I don’t think it’s anomalous to have a major national newspaper that’s profitable. And WaPo should have been absolutely primed for Trump II given its long time DC focus. They historically had the best political coverage of DC.
- monero-xmr 8mo agoThe network effects. The strong get stronger and grow larger, creating a fly wheel. On X.com there are citizen journalists publishing and reposting tons of hyper local news, and I assume it also hits FB but I don’t use that. We don’t need as many proper media companies as we did decades ago. The Tier 3 media outlets died long ago, now WaPo tried to be tier 1 but it failed, and will die as a has-been slowly. Probably should switch to Washington DC gossip and scoops as its forte.
- rootusrootus 8mo agoI don't want a world where we rely on citizen journalists. The value of the organizations is in providing credibility (or at least a predictable understanding of their bias). Just because some rando sounds convincing does not mean what he is presenting is any kind of credible representation of the truth
- panarky 8mo ago> They historically had the best political coverage of DC And then Bezos replaced veteran leaders with ideological leaders from the Murdoch empire. Then Bezos put his thumb on the scale and vetoed the paper's presidential endorsement in 2024, and 250,000 subscribers cancelled. Then Bezos dictated that the paper's opinion section will censor any idea that does not support conservative/libertarian/free-market ideology and 75,000 more subscribers cancelled. Maybe the ideological reorientation along with savage cuts to the newsroom has something to do the loss of subscribers and the dire financial straits used to justify even more cuts to the newsroom? There is a market for quality, fact-checked journalism that you can't get on podcasts and social media. But when you force that journalism through a right-wing ideological filter, you destroy the intrinsic value of independent journalism.
- diego_moita 8mo agoAlso The Guardian and The Economist.
- ReptileMan 8mo agoThe Guardian has turned into Gawker with better spell checker. Everything I have read from them is culture war and extremely shallow lately.
- mmooss 8mo ago> And their solution was games. For a long time, the solution of most newspapers was classified ads. They've always financed news with non-news services.
- keiferski 8mo agoThe financial times is doing well and has a better model IMO: expensive with a professional audience, not the general public.
- steveBK123 8mo agoBusiness news still has paying customers, its everyone else that is flailing
- rtkwe 8mo agoI don't think that's a useful model for a "paper of record" model like the NYT or formerly Washington Post. There's so much good to be had with a strong paper that isn't captured by it's ownership.
- einpoklum 8mo ago> for a "paper of record" model like the NYT NYT being a "paper of record" is something of a delusion of grandeur.
- fooqux 8mo ago> professional audience, not the general public. Yeah but that doesn't help when the entire purpose, when what we need, is an informed general populace.
- learingsci 8mo agoAccess to information is not a solution to that. You can’t educate people who refuse to learn.
- kemitchell 8mo agoSadly, I fully expect to see the cover price of The Economist reach twice the federal minimum wage. If the Fed goes back to cutting rates, it could be soon.
- boondongle 8mo agoKeep in mind, our parents (age specific) and/or their parents parents paid for news and didn't question that setup. Advertisors then went there because that's where the eyeballs were. What we're seeing is that left to their own devices and lacking a war or famine to force behavior change people would rather cut their news source in favor of fluff. It's not something the market will solve. The post 1940's US Media landscape was a direct reaction to multiple, non-contained wars in short succession. The political class doesn't feel they've "lost" control in a long time hence no urgency to fix it. In a lot of cases we're seeing Advertising warp and destroy the industries they provide money to. It's not evil, just that industries start to invert whether the people or the advertisors matter.
- brendoelfrendo 8mo agoWhich is, in and of itself, a problem: I feel like we're trending towards a US news landscape where the NYT and their editorial board are the only ones setting the tone and discourse of print media.
- detourdog 8mo agoI gave up on the NYT as a news source in their handling of the Iraq War. Prior to that it was a daily purchase.
- palmotea 8mo ago> I gave up on the NYT as a news source in their handling of the Iraq War. Prior to that it was a daily purchase. That was more than 20 years ago. It's hardly relevant to the journalism landscape in 2026. It's not inconceivable that in the near future, if you give up on the NYT, you give up on having a news source, period.
- einpoklum 8mo ago> That was more than 20 years ago. It's hardly relevant to the journalism landscape in 2026. It is actually very relevant. If you read Chomsky & Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent', you'll get examples from the 1970s and 1980s, another 20 years earlier, and you will find that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
- palmotea 8mo ago> It is actually very relevant. If you read Chomsky & Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent', you'll get examples from the 1970s and 1980s, another 20 years earlier, and you will find that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". You're stuck in the past, and letting the (non-existent) perfect be the enemy of the good. However imperfect the newspaper industry may have been, it was a whole hell of a lot better than the mix of social media and outright propaganda that's come to replace it. Pretty soon you may have no place to find out what's going on in your city, country, or the world; except via the rumor mill and works similar to Melania. But I guess you think that's fine fine, because Chomsky & Herman said the NYT wasn't perfect?
- einpoklum 8mo ago> You're stuck in the past Am I? I'm not the one claiming that > the newspaper industry... was a ... lot better than [that which]'s come to replace it.
- snowpid 8mo agoin the English speaking world... FAZ, Der Spiegel, NZZ earn money, too and their market is way more restricted.
- mejutoco 8mo agoSubscribing to FAZ is closer to getting a new phone line or a gym membership than paying for a newspaper. Do they accept credit card now?