New York Times Warns “Budget Cuts Are Coming”, Will Invest $5 Million To Cover Trump
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Jan 17, 2017
On Tuesday, the New York Times unveiled its “2020 report”, a self-assessment by the newspaper of its ongoing operational progress, accompanied by a note by top editors Dean Baquet and Joe Kahn, which also presents the company’s outlook on the future. Unlike previous years, when The NYT was worried that it was falling behind its digital competition like other liberal websites including Vox, WaPo, and BuzzFeed, this time the evaluation was more chipper, suggesting the NYT feels relatively good about its prospects.
Based on the report, the NYT’s stated goal to double its digital revenue to $800 million by 2020 seems within reach, after $500 million in 2016, and an trend line shows that revenue from consumers has far outstripped ad dollars. Additionally, the Times now counts more than 1.5 million paying digital subscribers and more than 1m print subscribers.
“We are, in the simplest terms, a subscription-first business. We are not trying to maximize clicks and sell low-margin advertising against them. We are not trying to win a pageviews arms race,” the 2020 report said. “Our focus on subscribers stems from a challenge confronting us: the weakness in the markets for print advertising and traditional forms of digital-display advertising.”
And yet not all was good news, because in the report was a warning that budget cuts are coming, a notice which followed the newspaper’s announcement several weeks ago that it would rent out floors in its headquarters to other companies to beef up its cash flow. To wit:
Some of these initiatives stem directly from consultations with the 2020 group; others result from the realities of the media business in a period of rapid change. Nothing can disguise the fact that the continued shift from print to digital demands a somewhat smaller and more focused newsroom.
There will be budget cuts this year. We will lay out the specifics in the coming weeks and months. We cannot pretend to be immune from financial pressures but we view this moment as a necessary repositioning of The Times’s newsroom, not as a diminishment.
The Rest…HERE
