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| Mark Thompson |
The New York Times Co. reported a 4.4 percent rise in 4Q operating profit to $78M on a 1.1 percent spurt in revenues to $508.4M.
CEO Mark Thompson talked up the robust growth in NYT’s digital subscription business.
Paid digital-only subs grew 30.8 percent to 4.4M during the quarter. Print & digital subs hit $5.2M at yearend.
Thompson credited the “extraordinary work of Times’ journalists” for the growth along with the “cross-disciplinary teams who enjoy significant autonomy and access to the machine learning, engineering and testing capabilities they need to move our business forward.”
Of the 342K net new digital subscribers added in the quarter, 232K of them were for the core news product with the balance split between cooking and crosswords subs.
The Times is jacking up the subscription price to “a subset of our tenured digital-only subscription base,” which will be the first price rise since the 2011 launch of the pay model.
Thompson is confident that “our loyal subscribers know that their financial contribution plays an essential role in maintaining the quality, breadth and depth of the report they value so much.”
The Times suffered a 10.8 percent drop to $92.3M in digital advertising during the quarter.
Print ad revenues decreased 10.5 percent to $79M.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
Versant Media Group, the NBCUniversal cable TV spin-off, today reported its first financial results as 2025 revenues dipped 5.3 percent to $6.7B and standalone EBITDA dropped 9.1 percent to $2.2B.
