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The New York Times continues to improve its financial performance, the company revealed in its first-quarter 2025 results, which were released on May 7. The NYT added about 250,000 digital-only subscribers, compared to the end of Q4 2024—bringing its number of total digital-only subscribers to 11.06M. With the addition of its 600,000 print subscribers, the overall subscriber number hit 11.66M. By the end of 2027, the company aims to have 15M subscribers. Despite a 5.8 percent jump in operating costs, the NYT’s operating profit still rose 21.9 percent from Q1 2024. Digital advertising was up 12.4 percent to $70.9M, while print ad revenues slid 8.5 percent to $37.2 M. In addition, close to half (49 percent) of NYT subscribers have such extras as Cooking, Games and Wirecutter as part of their subscription, up from 43 percent in Q1 2024. ARPU (that’s “average revenue per user”) jumped 3.6 percent from the year-ago period. Even The Athletic, which had long been a money-loser, was $2.9M in the black. “Our strategy is working and our business is growing and demonstrating resilience amidst the current economic and geopolitical uncertainty,” said New York Times Company president and CEO Meredith Kopit Leven.
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One America News Network, a far-right, pro-Trump platform, will take over the job of providing newsfeed services to Voice of America and other US government-funded media outlets, according to US Agency for Global Media (parent agency to VOA) senior advisor Kari Lake. OAN’s services will be provided free of charge. This follows a move by USAGM to cancel contracts with wire services including Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. OAN, which is owned by San Diego-based Herring Networks, faced defamation lawsuits over its false claims that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. “What they have done, in effect, is replace our 83-year legacy of producing reliable, authoritative news with the hard work and commitment of countless journalists with a contract to outsource our news-gathering to a source that is clearly partisan,” said Voice of America White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, who has been put on indefinite leave.
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| Gemma Fox |
TIME hires Gemma Fox, who was previously deputy US editor for the Times of London, as editorial director, news. At the Times of London, Fox oversaw coverage of the 2024 presidential election. She was previously deputy foreign editor at The Independent and worked at Sky News. In her new role she will oversee TIME's news team. “Gemma will lead coverage of major news events across the newsroom, working closely with subject matter teams and collaborating across departments—including audience, photography, art, and video—to bring the news to life across platforms,” said TIME editor in chief Sam Jacobs in a memo sent to staffers on May 8.
Underscore Media, a new creator-led media venture dedicated to New York sports, is built around three established New York sports personalities, Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski.
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.
