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New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

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Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#191

Post by adwn »

ggm wrote: post #133
naturalgradient wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I think you are just proving my point by getting upset and calling me 'ranty right'. Tribalism sells because it triggers emotions like these. It works for the Guardian just as well as it works for the NYT, Fox news or anyone else.

Oh please. You said far left. You invited the response. The NYT is simply not left, or far left. To clarify can you self identify your position in this spectrum? You think you are middle-of-the-road and the NYT is far left journalism? Look, I really don't care. Go talk to people with a range of views but saying the NYT is left wing journalism just beggars belief. Have you ever read a left wing paper? Here's a hint: t…

I think your disagreement mainly stems from using different terminology: naturalgradient uses "left" as in "socially left/socially progressive", while you use "left" as in "economically left/socialism".

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#192

Post by namdnay »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #188
csomar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech bubble really skewed the perception field of many people.

> tech bubble I think OP misread the quarterly figure as an annual one. “Tech bubble” usually applies to companies with much less than $100 million of profits.

I think the idea of comparing to the tech bubble is that it has skewed our perceptions of how much a company should make per employee, and how fast it should grow. Indeed many bubble companies are making little or no profits, but they don't have 3700 employees to pay every month + printing presses, buildings etc. The ROI is very different

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#193

Post by thinkloop »

nothis wrote: post #182
Dwolb wrote: post #76

That’s just insane. This is a great accomplishment for NYT but I’m worried about what it means for the rest of the industry. NYT switching its business model has to be one of the most public and well-executed digital transformations of an old company ever. If NYT is the best at this and can only turn 24M a quarter, almost everyone else must be absolutely bleeding. This would confirm most of the newspapers out there a…

There's just too many vital services that can't function with just ad financing. It's so obvious, that I have a slight hope we'll see new business models to accommodate for that. The problem is that I don't read a hundred articles a month by the NYT, I read maybe 5. And then 5 others on 30 different sites, each. What I can imagine is a "digital pass" kinda thing that lets you access a massive amount of content for a…

"Because that’s not how we use the web. People don’t visit a single site to seek out content. They search then nimbly hop from link to link building knowledge from an amalgamation of sources. The entire web is one big site."

"Given these usage patterns, paywalls fail miserably. The typical consumer would have to sign up to hundreds of properties, costing thousands of dollars per month. If they consumed every bit of content at the New York Times, the $25/month could be fair. But they don’t, leaving them with a glut of extremely underutilized and over-priced subscriptions."

https://artplusmarketing.com/paywall-not-paywalls-8474092276...

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#194

Post by pmyteh »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #186
Dwolb wrote: post #76

That’s just insane. This is a great accomplishment for NYT but I’m worried about what it means for the rest of the industry. NYT switching its business model has to be one of the most public and well-executed digital transformations of an old company ever. If NYT is the best at this and can only turn 24M a quarter, almost everyone else must be absolutely bleeding. This would confirm most of the newspapers out there a…

Newspapers were never valued for their ability of generating profits, but more as tools that can shape or sway the public opinion. Having "few" and "consolidated" reporting entities basically reflects the status-quo pre-internet, where at a local/national level you would have a handful of newspapers (or TV channels), each having often a fairly evident slant or clearly lobbying for a particular political party or soci…

Newspapers in the US were absolutely valued for their ability to generate profits. Local classified advertising revenue alone was enough that throughout the 80s and early 90s it was a very lucrative business to be in.

They're also tools that can shape or sway the public opinion. And not all markets have been profitable: in the UK, for example, the desire for political influence generated so many competing national newspapers that most of them lost money.

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#195

Post by namdnay »

unstableph wrote: post #160
naturalgradient wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not call the NYT a far left magazine. I said their reporting on EUROPEAN politics ("politics here") copies points from the far left (e.g. all mass migration is unquestionably good, parties against it must be right wing populists if not racists, etc). I think their reporting on campus politics, identity politics is also far left, but other than that their stance on Iraq war etc is more Hillary-left than traditio…

They are not far left, they are globalist. This is: far left when it comes to social issues in the US (feminism, uncontrolled immigration, etc) but also nuke all the Muslim countries and drag the US into an endless war.

What does feminism have to do with the far left? Neither the USSR nor Maoist China were particularly trailblazing as regards feminism.

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#196

Post by shripadk »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #175
dingaling wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only turn 24M a quarter, That's $24 million left unspent after salaries, benefits, travel and accommodation, equipment purchases, AP and Bloomberg fees, client entertainment, interest repayment, rents, board jollies... I don't see what's unhealthily low about that profit.

It depends on what the ROI and risks are. If you spend $100M a year to earn $1M in net profit, and your business is completely dependent on advertising and/or has declining subscription revenues then that’s terrible. There are much better ROIs to be had, so an investor would be better off investing elsewhere. Also, reporting faces heavy legal, travel, lodging, equipment, and food expenses and those don’t end up in th…

Why wouldn't equipment end up in asset column in case of a sale? Equipment is a fixed asset so it'll just be a transfer of asset at book value with gain/loss recorded in the sellers income statement.

EDIT: When you talk about "asset column" I'm assuming you mean the asset column in the books of accounts of the buyer.

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#198

Post by xeeeeeeeeeeenu »

Latty wrote: post #153
zarkov99 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even their incoherent stance on racism as illustrated in the Sarah Jeong debacle? I could live with a left bias but not their blatant hypocrisy.

Weaponizing old, out-of-context tweets is just the new alt-right playbook. James Gunn is the other obvious example. Yes, these people posted things that were bad ideas. They also apologised, made it clear they were not serious about what was said, and moved past it. To claim it makes their entire coverage of racism incoherent is... misleading at best. Imitating the masses of people trolling you as a joke may be a bad…

> Weaponizing old, out-of-context tweets is just the new alt-right playbook. James Gunn is the other obvious example.

They merely adopted left's usual tactics.

Personally, I don't support firing people over their private views, but in this case it's blatant hypocrisy. For example, a few months ago NYT fired Quinn Norton for almost the same thing[1]. Almost, because her old racist tweets weren't targeting white people.

>Yes, these people posted things that were bad ideas. They also apologised, made it clear they were not serious about what was said, and moved past it.

Sarah did not apologize. All she did was claiming that she's a victim.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/business/media/quinn-nort...

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#199

Post by guessthejuice »

Dwolb wrote: post #76

That’s just insane. This is a great accomplishment for NYT but I’m worried about what it means for the rest of the industry. NYT switching its business model has to be one of the most public and well-executed digital transformations of an old company ever. If NYT is the best at this and can only turn 24M a quarter, almost everyone else must be absolutely bleeding. This would confirm most of the newspapers out there a…

> That’s just insane.

It really isn't. It's why wall street is selling on the news.

> This is a great accomplishment for NYT but I’m worried about what it means for the rest of the industry.

It really isn't. It's why their share price dropped nearly 7% on the news. Their subscriber growth declined. That's not a good thing.

> NYT switching its business model has to be one of the most public and well-executed digital transformations of an old company ever.

NYT "switch" isn't even the most public or well-executed in their own industry. I'd give that nod to news corp and their properties - not that they are doing much better. NYT is playing catch-up.

> In the age of leaders publicly gaslighting, unrefereed global forums of social media which can be bought, and massive concentration of wealth at the top, fewer and consolidated reporting entities will be bad for the republic.

That's true. But the NYT is just as bought as any forum and gaslights as much as any politician. After all the NYT was created by a politician and a banker. It's in their DNA.

I do agree that fewer media entities will be detrimental to the republic. Unfortunately, the NYT along with CNN/WaPo is at the forefront of taking out smaller independent media entities.

Re: New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers

#200

Post by tanilama »

ericdykstra wrote: post #131
naturalgradient wrote: post #93

The greatest marketing trick the NYT has ever pulled off is presenting themselves as the last bastion of objectivity in the trump era. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the most recent Sarah Jeong controversy and virtually all reporting on migration, feminism, campus politics etc shows this. Mind you this is from a European perspective where I see almost all reporting about politics here as copying off…

Maybe in the past the NYT had earned their reputation as a trustworthy source, but they're certainly eroding that reputation at a blistering pace. They might survive as a partisan publisher, plenty do, but I always go into NYT articles expecting bias in reporting. It's not just the politics, either. I ran across this article from just a couple of days ago and couldn't believe it got past an editor: https://www.nytime…

I can echo that. Their journalism feels predictable, not only the opinion, but also the writing of it. The way they approach the subject from an observer, and possibly assumed superior perspective make me feel detached and indifferent as with the reporter. Other left-learning publication, like Guardian, suffers less from such formulaic problem, make me wonder this might be intentional.
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