Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I've been thinking about that, though. I don't think that's likely to happen anytime soon. Look at how crazy 2021 has been. I’ve been literally just thinking about this for like my own life and sanity. I think we just got to accept that we live in a world of accelerating change, which means lots of frequent disruptions of all types. All of which is probably good for the news business. Yeah and this turns into a B, if they're not—on this fixed cost base—able to just continue the subscriber tear that they've been on, but just modestly, linearly continue to acquire subscribers. I think there's an absolute A+ case if they do keep making investments and really turn into more of like a tech company of experiment, learn, rapidly iterate. The New York Times has revenue opportunities lying around all over the place that they're not taking advantage of. If they can figure out a way to monetize those, in a way that feels authentic to The Times but is also a really good business strategy, which I feel I'd give them a C so far, maybe a B-, then I don't care about, let's taper off the hiring. Go high Google levels of people and go build more and more stuff then double down on what's working. Even just sticking on the media side. They've done some experimenting with video and streaming content. They've done deals with Netflix, with Prime, with Hulu, with FX.…

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