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The desperation of NYTimes

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Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#121

Post by stronglikedan »

epistasis wrote: post #3

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they…

> Do not do business with unethical companies.

If they got what I want, I don't care about ethics, I care about value. I've just never seen value in NYT.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#123

Post by micromacrofoot »

epistasis wrote: post #3

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they…

The FTC did away with the "call to cancel" after subscribing online, fortunately. You have to allow cancellation using the same method as subscription. So they can no longer do this.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/...

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#125

Post by sandcat_ »

I pay the $2/month. They occasionally try and get me to pay more. No chance, I always tell them I’ll cancel (and I would.)

I don’t get it. If they cut out all the awful mid-article ads, stopped the page resetting to the top every time you hit the back button, and stopped nagging me to install the app (which I don’t use because of the aforementioned mid-article ads, but would use otherwise), I’d happily pay 5x the subscription. I like the content (mostly) but everything else makes me despise them.

I just want to read the news!

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#126

Post by convolvatron »

darepublic wrote: post #16
epistasis wrote: post #3

NYTimes is predatory on subscriptions. Over my long lifetime I've subscribed twice, and regretted it both times with intensity. Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours for cancellation , is a toxic place. I've been told they have stopped this predatory practice due to some newly passed laws or something, but they…

lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater

I think we need more babies. I would be ecstatic to pay for an alternative source of national US journalism that actually has some analysis and decent writing. NYT is a shadow of its former self, apnews reads to me like USnews. international helps round it out, but it's not super in depth for the US.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#127

Post by [deleted] »

monkaiju wrote: post #69

If you needed another reason to unsubscribe, the NYT has been a persistent peddler in American propaganda to the point that they arent willing to issue corrections for even their most falsified pieces. Their behavior since the start of the Gaza genocide has been particularly disgusting. More info: https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com/boycott-nyt

[deleted]

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#128

Post by TheAtomic »

The fact that this somewhat banal article has climbed this far on HN tells you that the schadenfreude of seeing the NYT berated is high indeed.

~ just a guy trying to get by on $690,000 a year in Queens

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#129

Post by jerf »

"It's not. It made me feel powerless. It put a sour taste in my mouth. It made them reek of desperation."

Relatedly, I've been answering those dumb-ass "How do you feel about our product?" popups that Microsoft Office is so fond of with some variation on the theme of "Be less needy."

You feel like the stereotypical clingy girlfriend... "Do you love me? Would you recommend me to your friends? Are you interested in the other services I can provide? Would you still love me if a witch turned me into a frog and I could only communicate in croaking sounds? Are you thinking of leaving me? Would you still be thinking of leaving me if I set all your documents on fire and scattered them across the front lawn and then told you my engineers 'accidentally' lost the backups?"

It's not like I have any expectation that anyone, even an AI, is reading these things anyhow.

Your KPIs are not my problem.

Re: The desperation of NYTimes

#130

Post by curun1r »

angelofthe0dd wrote: post #96

I bought into the low-cost subscription offer a few months ago. Since then, I get a huge pop-up ad literally every other article, asking me to upgrade to all-family access. I also receive a similar email every other day. They must be very desperate indeed to have to nag me every other article to upgrade. The irritatingly incessant pop-ups have guaranteed that, not only will I NOT be upgrading, I will be cancelling my…

What's interesting is that I can see exactly what is happening behind the scenes at the Times because I've been in so many meetings that resulted in similar data-driven decisions.

Both your experience and the article author's experience manifest in the feeling of an antagonistic relationship and frustration on the part of the customer. But what I'd wager is happening is that the analytics teams have looked at subscriber retention and seen patterns. Perhaps subscribers who use 3 of their 5 key features don't cancel nearly as often. Or maybe subscribers who share with family rarely cancel because they either assume their family is getting value from it or they don't want to have the conversation about whether it's worth the price.

I have no doubt that a pure-digital product like the Times has tons of data on their users and have determined the key metrics that lead to retention. So their natural tendency is to try to game the metrics by trying to push as many accounts into those high-retention buckets as possible. The behavior you and the article author have experienced is the result of an organization becoming extremely data focused and losing focus on the customer experience. It's something to remember for those of us who ever find ourselves in a meeting where we're dissecting retention metrics and trying to figure out how to make our companies more successful.

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