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NY Times Passes 1M Digital Subscribers

Posted by samzenpus on from the world-wide-paper-route dept.

HughPickens.com writes: Many news organizations, facing competition from digital outlets, have sharply reduced the size of their newsrooms and their investment in news gathering but less than four-and-a-half years after launching its pay model the NY Times has increased coverage as it announced that the Times has passed one million digital-only subscribers, giving them far more than any other news organization in the world. The Times still employs as many reporters as it did 15 years ago — and its ranks now include graphics editors, developers, video journalists and other digital innovators. "It's a tribute to the hard work and innovation of our marketing, product and technology teams and the continued excellence of our journalism," says CEO Mark Thompson.

According to Ken Doctor the takeaway from the Times success is that readers reward elite global journalism. The Wall Street Journal is close behind the Times, at 900,000, while the FT's digital subscription number stands at 520,000. "These solid numbers form bedrock for the future. For news companies, being national now means being global, and being global means enjoying unprecedented reach," says Doctor. "These audiences of a half-million and more portend more reader revenue to come."

8 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    A million people online who don't understand that deleting your cookies enables you to read as many articles as you want for free.

    1. Re:Wow! by tripleevenfall · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IMO, if you trust any of the old media enough to pay for a subscription, and you spend enough time on one website to get your money's worth, you're probably getting too much of your information from a single source.

    2. Re:Wow! by harshath.jr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps a subset of that million just believes in "paying it back" to the journalistic institutions of their communities. Just saying. Full disclosure: I'm not a subscriber to any digital publication.

    3. Re:Wow! by tomhath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I suspect it's more like supporting their own view of the world. People who subscribe to NYT or WSJ want news with the editorial spin from those sources to be widely distributed. Same with people who donate to and support congressional funding for NPR.

    4. Re:Wow! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But how many of those sources are actually doing investigative journalism? I'd take one source that has the resources to do real investigation over ten that can barely afford to regurgitate press releases and rely on sponsored articles for their income.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. One of the last real news outlets remaining by timholman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm an NY Times digital subscriber, for two reasons. First, subscription costs are dirt cheap for people in academia. Second, the NY Times is one of the few remaining news services in the USA that practices investigative journalism any more. I may not always agree with the NY Times' "slant" on a particular story, but at least there is some real content to what they publish.

    Our local newspaper is your typical Gannett mess, with the only real "news" being the USA Today insert. The local news is little more than thinly-disguised opinion pieces, local crime reports with minimal information, and articles that rightfully belong on a Gawker site or in People magazine. My wife and I dropped our remaining weekend subscription to the local paper months ago, and we haven't missed it since.

  3. Good for them! by trybywrench · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good for them, they've adapted, changed, and are pulling ahead. I remember when the pay-wall decision was made, they were one of the first to do it and it was an incredibly controversial and risky proposition "why would someone pay when Google News is free?". Everyone was very nervous and there were lots of naysayers but looks like they're figuring it out. Hats off and rock on.

    --
    I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
  4. You need to pay for news. by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You should pay for some sort of news outlet. New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, I don't care which: you need to make sure that the place you're getting your information from is beholden to its readers, not just to its advertisers and owners. You know the old saying: if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product.