The Post is on a pace to lose about $100 million in 2023, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s finances; two other people briefed on the situation said the company was expecting to miss its forecasts for ad revenue this year. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal financial matters. The Post has struggled to increase the number of its paying customers since the 2020 election, when its digital subscriptions peaked at three million. It now has around 2.5 million.
Cities should own their own stadia and the teams that play in them. They should also experiment with how to help their local newspaper(s) survive. Good luck, because our citizenry is more and more idiotic (in the original Greek sense), and less willing to rationally support the crucial civic institutions of civil society.
Paul, the money is the online presence. In that race only the NYT is winning.
The paywall is something like $17 or $20 per month but most of us know to cancel and pay $4 per month.
How many digital subscribers does the NYT have?
The Times now has 9.17 million paid subscribers. It has a goal of 15 million by the end of 2027. The company reported $76 million in adjusted operating profit, 18 percent less than the same quarter last year. It generated total revenue of $555.7 million, an 11.5 percent increase from a year earlier.Aug 3, 2022
The reason for the visitor counts is who is quoting or linking the times to message boards and SM is way up. The times is the non clickbait source people link the most.
Since WaPo is also losing subscribers, they will run out of readers first. It could be one of the reasons Bezos is getting involved again in the management.
As an example of the harm to come if true journalism continues to erode…
I saw a YouTube clip of a TV news story from the NBC affiliate in Kansas City, KSHB regarding more legal filings they had to pursue regarding the illegal search and seizure case of the Marion, Kansas PD and a local Marion newspaper. In that original case, some dispute involving the owner of a local bar resulted in that bar owner talking to her friend, the Marion PD Chief of Police to have his police raid not only the newspaper’s offices but the home of the editor AND the home of his 90+ year old mother and owner of the paper. The story made headlines back in August not only for the blatant 1st amendment violation of the seizure against the paper but the fact that the newspaper owner / mom died two days later from the stress of police barging into her home and ransacking it.
KSHB is suing the PD because the station knows there are numerous SMS text messages sent between the chief and the bar owner PRIOR to the raids as they discuss how the police will conduct the raids. The station KNOWS these texts exist because they have SOME of them, they just don’t have all of them. The police department is claiming they have no state obligation to disclose them when in fact Kansas State law requires it. Without a major media outlet pursuing this case, these types of abuses will just be swept under the rug, allowing this type of corruption and abuse of power to spread.
If you think the fish rots from the head down, you haven’t been following local government enough. The fish can rot from pretty much every location simultaneously. When authentic journalism is replaced by punditry and trending memes, the game is over.
