 |
| 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.
Michael Kaminer, who was responsible for the Observer’s “Power List” for the past 13 years, has cut ties with the publication... The New York Times Company continues the march toward its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027... The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing more than $6 million in funding to eight organizations working to address the challenges local news and information environments face along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Conservative outlets Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon... CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era as head of standards and practices Claudia Milne exits... Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student.
Rothschild family plans to unload 26.7 percent stake in The Economist... STAT, a digital media company that focuses the life sciences, brings back Damian Garde, who anchored its biotech newsletter and podcast from 2016 to 2024... High Times officially resumes print publication (following its 2024 shutdown) with the release of a limited-edition, collectible 50th anniversary issue. 
CBS News is set to hand over its reins to The Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss as Paramount acquires her site for $155M... C-SPAN comes on board as an official media partner of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which is charged by Congress to lead the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence... A new Gallup survey says that the level of trust that US audiences have in the media has hit a new low.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has named Kenneth Weinstein, former head of the conservative Hudson Institute, as ombudsman for CBS News.
