8 ms·

It seems like they're aggressively paying down debts and resolving union related costs. Based on their quarterly reports they seem to be doing okay in terms of

by djloche 11y ago

It seems like they're aggressively paying down debts and resolving union related costs. Based on their quarterly reports they seem to be doing okay in terms of cash on balance sheet and revenue vs costs of production. Their major concern long term is still valid - 74% of their revenue comes from print advertising. They need to significantly grow the digital side of their business, and reduce their overall costs.

mattdotc 11y ago
It would also be nice if people would re-think their mental model about where content comes from and who pays for it. I hear about so many people blocking ads and whatnot - and I understand why - but you don't really see these same people evangelize subscriptions or otherwise supporting these places. Of course, ad blocking is only one aspect to lower digital advertising revenues, but so many people complain about paywalls and whatnot, yet nobody seems to have any good solutions. Until we have a good solution, and people get over their entitlement to free (as in beer) media, outlets like the NYT and others will continue to precariously wobble near the tipping point of print's demise (and the revenue with it).
- buserror 11y ago
  I don't see adblocks at being the problem; adblock is /mandatory/ these days on the web; for the 0.01% website that deserve the revenue, the rest is there to abuse it, put autoplay flash, full screen popups, tracking cookies and all they can possibly /can/ on you. The other problem is the 'monetisation'; it seems everyone around wants £10 a month. Sorry, I might pay £10/m for netflix that I use often, but do I want to pay that to everyone that I use twice a month, or even sometime a lot less? Well, nope. Not only that, but registering and paying makes you even more marketable, where your viewing habits and so on can get sold on to 'partners'. I don't /mind/ paying for content, and I don't /mind/ ads, it's just the abusive nature of how it's done these days that I mind.
  - justizin 11y ago
    Seriously, I was reading a WIRED article, and in an ad slot, there's an image asking that I disable my ad-blocker for them, so I did, and reloaded. The two-page article was fronted by a 30-second or more preroll video and there were animations all over the page. Re-enabled. When ads stop being malware, I'll let them through.
  - grkvlt 11y ago
    > adblock is /mandatory/ these days No, it really is not. Ad-blockers are run by a minority of users, and the vast majority simply use whatever browser camne with their PC, or maybe download Chrome. But installing ad-blockers, GreaseMonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and the like basically never crosses the mind of your average web content viewing public. [1] I'm not sure I'd count the adverts I see as 'abusive' either. Many times I have found ads useful, interesting, curious or (on YouTube videos) worth watching without skipping. Just as with TV and newspapers, yes, there is much crass, unsubtle, and badly created advertising. However, it's all ignorable, and even if a site pops up an inter-stitial advert, I've yet to come across one that I cannot close and move on to the content. Of course, pop-ups that tell me I have read all the free content I am allowed are different, and in those cases I make a choice - do I want to read the article enough to pay for it? As for wanting GBP 10 per month, I would spend much more than that on physical newspapers (at 50p per issue, the 'i' is one of the cheapest, so that's about GBP 15 per month) so it seems pretty reasonable. And I don't expect my copy of the Guardian to have no adverts because I paid for it, as opposed to reading it in the library. In fact, again, I find the adverts can often be useful and informative, even in such a widely targeted medium as a single newspaper. [1] full disclosure - I have never used or installed an ad-blocker, nor wanted to in my 20+ years of web usage
    - ersii 11y ago
      How do you know that it's only a minority of users that are deploying some way of blocking advertisement in their browsers? I'm genuinely interested and I'm raising the question as you stated it as a matter of fact. Even if you never installed an adblocker, "Adblock Plus" has been downloaded over 19.5 million times for Firefox, "NoScript" has been downloaded over 2 million times for Firefox. Sufficient to say, there's an increasing amount of web sites and newspapers that have "adblocking detection" and suggest/beg that you disable it these days. [1] Full disclosure, I block ads because a lot of site owners go too far. I have no hard feelings about it. Sucks to be them, but what can I do. I whitelist sites that behave and have decent/good content.
- hyperbovine 11y ago
  > but you don't really see these same people evangelize subscriptions or otherwise supporting these places. Wait, I totally do that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9697153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9697153). I already subscribe to NYTimes, Spotify, Netflix, etc. and I'd love to pay a reasonable monthly fee to Google, HN, whoever else if it means getting to use their product without being spied on or sold to. Due to a sort of path determinism, everyone just assumed that everything online must be free without giving the traditional model a fair shake.
- ovis 11y ago
  Has anyone experimented with micropayments? I'd pay a dollar or two to read an article like this now and then, but I couldn't see myself paying $200 a year for a subscription.
  - tinco 11y ago
    Blendle does that I believe.
  - vmarsy 11y ago
    Yes, Blendle in the Netherlands (and Germany?) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9453821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9453821
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ersii 11y ago
    I know it's not really the same, but Flattr has been around for a long time - trying to help monetizing (freely accessed mostly) web content.
- oconnore 11y ago
  The good solution is subscription fees. There is no other good solution, including advertising. A media company that can't make money on subscriptions is doomed to fail (I consider turning into a clickbait-ey shithole a failure) I block 100% of ads on desktop and mobile. I also spend ~ $350 a year (that's $30 a month) on media subscriptions, not counting individual movies, shows, books, etc. This is a sustainable model for the companies that I subscribe to.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  People's "entitlement" is a complete red herring. The problem is the semantics of monetizing non-scarce, non-rivalrous goods in a digital age are open-ended. Complaining about free-riding is a distraction and demagoguery.
  - pyre 11y ago
    > non-scarce When it comes to things like quality content, the cost of replication might be cheap, but the cost of creation is not.
- ams6110 11y ago
  My local paper has a subscription website, which I've paid for at times, but the thing is, they still blast you with annoying popup and animated ads even as a paid subscriber. No thanks, you can't have it both ways.
morsch 11y ago
One reason why so few people are willing to pay for good content is that there is so much of it. If the NYT goes goes broke and stops publishing, or puts their stuff behind a paywall and consequently goes broke and stops publishing, people don't care, because there's dozens and dozens of other publications with the same quality competing for their attention. Along with, of course, a whole internet full of click-bait, zero research garbage, but that is sort-of beside the point: there is free quality journalism to be had elsewhere, in such seeming abundance that I can't say that this carefree attitude by readers is short-sighted. Another thing is that the manner in which journalism is consumed has changed fundamentally: we pick and chose individual articles from a variety of sources instead of reading or skimming through one publisher's entire newspaper for any given day. In other words, it's not even the NYT that's competing for attention with other publishers, it's any given article that's competing for attention with any other article. It's possible that I'm not giving the NYT and their ilk enough credit: while I think there's no debating there's an overabundance of thoughtful, well-written long- (and short-) form content out there -- more of it alone on HN that I'd have to quit my job to read it all -- I'm open to the suggestion that much of it is still different from what newspapers like the NYT do, or strive to do, particularly in terms of dedicated research and fact-checking. If that's the case, and there remains a demand for this kind of content as opposed to content that's "just" well-written and thoughtful, maybe at some point before it's gone it'll be rare enough that people will start paying for it.
- ForrestN 11y ago
  Briefly: the NYT has no true peers, which is why it's called "The Paper of Record." Nationally, globally and locally, it plays an indispensable civic role, to say nothing of its value qua "content on the internet." Much of their reporting shapes the conversations that define many, many dimensions of contemporary life, and if they were to disappear quite a bit of important truth would go uncovered. Journalism is not merely something to be consumed, it is a necessary part of the social ecosystem. The New York Times is too big to fail, and is easily among the most important corporations of any size, period, despite it's small capitalization. edit: for what it's worth, my father was a journalism professor and sometimes-head of one of the top journalism programs in the US, so I grew up hearing a lot about this sort of thing!

by djloche 11y ago

mattdotc 11y ago

It would also be nice if people would re-think their mental model about where content comes from and who pays for it. I hear about so many people blocking ads and whatnot - and I understand why - but you don't really see these same people evangelize subscriptions or otherwise supporting these places. Of course, ad blocking is only one aspect to lower digital advertising revenues, but so many people complain about paywalls and whatnot, yet nobody seems to have any good solutions. Until we have a good solution, and people get over their entitlement to free (as in beer) media, outlets like the NYT and others will continue to precariously wobble near the tipping point of print's demise (and the revenue with it).

buserror 11y ago
I don't see adblocks at being the problem; adblock is /mandatory/ these days on the web; for the 0.01% website that deserve the revenue, the rest is there to abuse it, put autoplay flash, full screen popups, tracking cookies and all they can possibly /can/ on you. The other problem is the 'monetisation'; it seems everyone around wants £10 a month. Sorry, I might pay £10/m for netflix that I use often, but do I want to pay that to everyone that I use twice a month, or even sometime a lot less? Well, nope. Not only that, but registering and paying makes you even more marketable, where your viewing habits and so on can get sold on to 'partners'. I don't /mind/ paying for content, and I don't /mind/ ads, it's just the abusive nature of how it's done these days that I mind.
- justizin 11y ago
  Seriously, I was reading a WIRED article, and in an ad slot, there's an image asking that I disable my ad-blocker for them, so I did, and reloaded. The two-page article was fronted by a 30-second or more preroll video and there were animations all over the page. Re-enabled. When ads stop being malware, I'll let them through.
- grkvlt 11y ago
  > adblock is /mandatory/ these days No, it really is not. Ad-blockers are run by a minority of users, and the vast majority simply use whatever browser camne with their PC, or maybe download Chrome. But installing ad-blockers, GreaseMonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and the like basically never crosses the mind of your average web content viewing public. [1] I'm not sure I'd count the adverts I see as 'abusive' either. Many times I have found ads useful, interesting, curious or (on YouTube videos) worth watching without skipping. Just as with TV and newspapers, yes, there is much crass, unsubtle, and badly created advertising. However, it's all ignorable, and even if a site pops up an inter-stitial advert, I've yet to come across one that I cannot close and move on to the content. Of course, pop-ups that tell me I have read all the free content I am allowed are different, and in those cases I make a choice - do I want to read the article enough to pay for it? As for wanting GBP 10 per month, I would spend much more than that on physical newspapers (at 50p per issue, the 'i' is one of the cheapest, so that's about GBP 15 per month) so it seems pretty reasonable. And I don't expect my copy of the Guardian to have no adverts because I paid for it, as opposed to reading it in the library. In fact, again, I find the adverts can often be useful and informative, even in such a widely targeted medium as a single newspaper. [1] full disclosure - I have never used or installed an ad-blocker, nor wanted to in my 20+ years of web usage
  - ersii 11y ago
    How do you know that it's only a minority of users that are deploying some way of blocking advertisement in their browsers? I'm genuinely interested and I'm raising the question as you stated it as a matter of fact. Even if you never installed an adblocker, "Adblock Plus" has been downloaded over 19.5 million times for Firefox, "NoScript" has been downloaded over 2 million times for Firefox. Sufficient to say, there's an increasing amount of web sites and newspapers that have "adblocking detection" and suggest/beg that you disable it these days. [1] Full disclosure, I block ads because a lot of site owners go too far. I have no hard feelings about it. Sucks to be them, but what can I do. I whitelist sites that behave and have decent/good content.
hyperbovine 11y ago
> but you don't really see these same people evangelize subscriptions or otherwise supporting these places. Wait, I totally do that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9697153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9697153). I already subscribe to NYTimes, Spotify, Netflix, etc. and I'd love to pay a reasonable monthly fee to Google, HN, whoever else if it means getting to use their product without being spied on or sold to. Due to a sort of path determinism, everyone just assumed that everything online must be free without giving the traditional model a fair shake.
ovis 11y ago
Has anyone experimented with micropayments? I'd pay a dollar or two to read an article like this now and then, but I couldn't see myself paying $200 a year for a subscription.
- tinco 11y ago
  Blendle does that I believe.
- vmarsy 11y ago
  Yes, Blendle in the Netherlands (and Germany?) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9453821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9453821
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ersii 11y ago
  I know it's not really the same, but Flattr has been around for a long time - trying to help monetizing (freely accessed mostly) web content.
oconnore 11y ago
The good solution is subscription fees. There is no other good solution, including advertising. A media company that can't make money on subscriptions is doomed to fail (I consider turning into a clickbait-ey shithole a failure) I block 100% of ads on desktop and mobile. I also spend ~ $350 a year (that's $30 a month) on media subscriptions, not counting individual movies, shows, books, etc. This is a sustainable model for the companies that I subscribe to.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
People's "entitlement" is a complete red herring. The problem is the semantics of monetizing non-scarce, non-rivalrous goods in a digital age are open-ended. Complaining about free-riding is a distraction and demagoguery.
- pyre 11y ago
  > non-scarce When it comes to things like quality content, the cost of replication might be cheap, but the cost of creation is not.
ams6110 11y ago
My local paper has a subscription website, which I've paid for at times, but the thing is, they still blast you with annoying popup and animated ads even as a paid subscriber. No thanks, you can't have it both ways.

morsch 11y ago

One reason why so few people are willing to pay for good content is that there is so much of it. If the NYT goes goes broke and stops publishing, or puts their stuff behind a paywall and consequently goes broke and stops publishing, people don't care, because there's dozens and dozens of other publications with the same quality competing for their attention. Along with, of course, a whole internet full of click-bait, zero research garbage, but that is sort-of beside the point: there is free quality journalism to be had elsewhere, in such seeming abundance that I can't say that this carefree attitude by readers is short-sighted. Another thing is that the manner in which journalism is consumed has changed fundamentally: we pick and chose individual articles from a variety of sources instead of reading or skimming through one publisher's entire newspaper for any given day. In other words, it's not even the NYT that's competing for attention with other publishers, it's any given article that's competing for attention with any other article. It's possible that I'm not giving the NYT and their ilk enough credit: while I think there's no debating there's an overabundance of thoughtful, well-written long- (and short-) form content out there -- more of it alone on HN that I'd have to quit my job to read it all -- I'm open to the suggestion that much of it is still different from what newspapers like the NYT do, or strive to do, particularly in terms of dedicated research and fact-checking. If that's the case, and there remains a demand for this kind of content as opposed to content that's "just" well-written and thoughtful, maybe at some point before it's gone it'll be rare enough that people will start paying for it.

ForrestN 11y ago
Briefly: the NYT has no true peers, which is why it's called "The Paper of Record." Nationally, globally and locally, it plays an indispensable civic role, to say nothing of its value qua "content on the internet." Much of their reporting shapes the conversations that define many, many dimensions of contemporary life, and if they were to disappear quite a bit of important truth would go uncovered. Journalism is not merely something to be consumed, it is a necessary part of the social ecosystem. The New York Times is too big to fail, and is easily among the most important corporations of any size, period, despite it's small capitalization. edit: for what it's worth, my father was a journalism professor and sometimes-head of one of the top journalism programs in the US, so I grew up hearing a lot about this sort of thing!