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NY Times Passes 1M Digital Subscribers
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."
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."
I am one of one million, and a long-time reader of NY Times. Frankly, I think this is a little over blown and I sure hope they don't hurt themselves patting themselves on the back. I read the NYT mobile edition daily, enabled by my subscription to the Sunday paper home delivery. The Business and Technology sections have the same content listed for weeks on end. They suffered greatly when David Pogue left. Much of the "paid" subscription content is just blog postings. Better than most blogs, written by intelligent journalists, but blog postings none-the-less.
And about once a week (at least), you get a nasty full screen popover. Their recent coverage about the cost/benefit of ad blocking shows their pages are heavy, which gets annoying and uses bandwidth if you don't hit reader view really fast or use an ad blocker.
I love the New York Times, but have never been happy with their IT department. Will never, ever, ever use the mobile app they keep trying to get me to download. Burned too many times on that one.
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
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?
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.
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.
The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country.
The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who actually run the country.
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.
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.
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