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The New York Times Co. today reported $55.2M in Q4 net income compared to a year ago $56.8M loss and a 265K surge in digital subscribers, the biggest gain since the 2016 presidential election.
Paid-only digital subs rose 27.1 percent from the 2017 Q4 period. Of the 265K new subscribers, 172K were for the news site with the others split between cooking and crossword products.
Mark Thompson CEO said the NYTC ended 2018 with 3.4M digital subscriptions and 4.3M total subscriptions.
The company chalked up $709M in 2018 digital revenues, which is three-quarters of the way to achieving its five-year goal of $800M by 2020.
In a sign of bullishness, Thompson plans to grow the subscription base to more than 10M by 2025.
Wall Street cheered the NYTC performance, bidding its stock up 13.6 percent to a 52-week high of $30.56.
The stock traded as low as $21.34 during the past year.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
