Digital Subs Surge At The New York Times

The New York Times Co pleased investors with market-beating profit and revenue as digital subscriptions surged, underscoring the turnaround in its fortunes that had wavered as fewer people bought newspapers, reports Reuters.

New York Times has been discounting heavily to lure more paid subscribers to its online content and is packaging its subscriptions more attractively, with access to sought-after daily crossword puzzles and cooking recipes.

The company added 157,000 digital subscribers in the quarter ended Dec. 31, taking its total subscriber count to above 2.5 million. Revenue from its digital-only subscription products, including news as well as crossword and NYT Cooking Recipes, increased 51.2 percent to $96.3 million.

Subscriptions in the quarter also got a boost from the newspaper’s coverage of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment story, helping the company post the highest-ever annual subscription revenue of $1 billion.

NYT has faced frequent criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump who has called it “failing @nytimes” on Twitter and accused it of bias.

This has, however, resulted in a bump in subscriptions at the publisher, which is building on the online readership it gained during the 2016 presidential election by marketing unbiased reporting as a sales strategy.

Chief Executive Mark Thompson told Reuters that the newspaper will also benefit from Facebook Inc’s initiative to prioritize high-quality news outlets in its social media posts to counter fake news and sensationalism.

Still, New York Times’ print business continued to decline in the fourth quarter.

Print advertising revenue fell 8.4 percent even as digital advertising revenue rose 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter.

Despite falling revenue from print advertising, Thompson said he had no plans of shutting their print operations.

The company posted a net loss of $57.8 million, compared with a year-ago profit of $37.6 million, mostly due to higher costs and pension settlements.

In a separate announcement, on Wednesday, The Times said it had reached a multiyear agreement to print and distribute Newsday’s products out of the company’s plant in Queens.