David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…If you’re going to catch us up to 2016, then there are some other things to say about The Times in 2016, namely around the subscribers. Let’s contextualize some of the subscriber numbers so far because I made a little timeline here. You’re right. In year one, they did 400,000 new subscribers, 2011 not necessarily great. By 2012, that’s when they reduced it to 10 free articles. In 2013, The Times announced that—for the first time in decades—they made more revenue through subscriptions than advertising. That’s print plus online combined. That says a lot about both the decline of the advertising business. The famous line is trading print dollars for digital dimes, and it says quite a bit about the fact that they’re growing material revenue. I think there are hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue at this point in 2013 coming from subscriptions but still not a million subscribers. In 2016, it had taken The New York Times 4½ years to get to their first million subscribers, and then it only took them a year-and-a-half to get to their second million subscribers, just before the election of President Donald J. Trump. When we are referring to the failing New York Times narrative, that it was failing and was so prevalent. Of course, they got taken up by a certain presidential candidate in the 2016 election and then president thereafter. The reality is that was the best thing (I think) that ever happens in The New York Times. That is the ultimate irony, the endless news cycles of insane—what’s the best way to describe it? The New York Times, while being berated by this man as being failing is skyrocketing in popularity and becoming a better business than ever on the fuel of him. The paintbrush to paint the canvas of the story is so rich and dripping with irony.…

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