NYTimes knows their readers
This was my open tab I forgot to close over the weekend, essentially that the NYTimes is trying to figure out (and has been for a while) why the rest of us don’t read the NYTimes.
So the paper has put together a team to help ensure confidence in its journalism and broaden its reach beyond NYCity hubs and across political lines to amass a readership of 10M paid subscribers. You know, they want to win us over so we will shell out our precious Ameros.
The initiative was unveiled on September 15 in a slick press release introducing a 10-person “cross-functional” team that includes three journalists from the newsroom—newly acquired former Politico executive editor Paul Volpe,veteran media reporter Edmund Lee, and senior Culture editor Susanna Timmons—plus staffers from product, design, marketing, and audience insights. It’s part of a supercharged standards operation that’s been expanding under the aegis of Cliff Levy, one of the Times’ highest-ranking newsroom figures and someone whose name has been bandied about in the succession sweepstakes. It was described to me as “such a signature thing for the publisher” and “one of his biggest priorities right now.” The announcement raised eyebrows in media circles, but it also left many scratching their heads, with boilerplate such as “developing innovative ways of deepening our audience’s trust in our mission and in the credibility of our journalism, no matter where it is encountered.”
Say what? You don’t need Kreskin to learn that we, the grotty little people don’t trust the media (generally) and the NYTimes (specifically) because they’ve been in the bag for Republicans for years. See: Judith Miller, Maggie Haberman, the entire opinion staff (with limited exceptions).
But what really caught my eye is this ‘graph (emphasis mine):
The more people outside of coastal bubbles like New York, Washington, and L.A. who trust the Times and understand its mission, the more subscribers the Times can potentially net. The goal is 10 million paying readers by 2025; at the end of the second quarter, there were 7,936,000, including 7,133,000 digital-only subscribers. As a third source with knowledge of the project put it, part of the idea is “to broaden the Times’ readership and make sure that the Times is innovating. Broader means all kinds of readers, including politically. But we need more young readers, we need more readers of color, more who are middle class or lower class, and so on.”
Pro-tip: When you want to sell your expensive subscriptions to us unsophisticated yokels, don’t call us lower class.
Mock Paper Scissors 
Yeah, smooth. Also maybe try projecting something other than “ok, I’ll speak really slowly so the liberals will understand how they’re wrong” in their editorial stance.
Oh, and on the odd occasion, take a moment to acknowledge when you discover that you were wrong (Iraq, Afghanistan, right wing terrorism…), that the DFHs were correct from the beginning.
We may not always be correct, but we’re sure as fuck miles ahead of the NY Times.
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Reading NY Times, flossing teeth: more people feel compelled to say they do than actually do.
I am definitely in that “so on” category.
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Given that, as near as I can tell, the NYT paywalls me anytime I follow a story link, I’m disinclined to offer them my pennies. Moreover it seems to be written by and for the rich people who think their money will insulate them from all the bad things that are about to happen, and which they’ve helped to create. I doubt the NYT will ever treat the opinions of my “class” as anything more than specimens under glass, to be stared at by the People Who Matter.
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Brettvk Everything west of the Hudson River is only theoretical, anyway.
Rgds,
TG
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Oh no, it’s definitely real…
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I would consider adding the grey lady to my list of daily news sources if and only if they did these things:
Fire Bobo and his endless rewrites of the same, sad book report that supposedly extols the virtures of the morally bankrupt republican cult while ‘bothsidering’ every problem they have ever created onto weak corporate dems. 2. Simplify their daily lexicon; most people don’t speak or write using such ornate language. 3. Stop making so many ‘cletus safaris’ to diners into the middle of Ohio for the so-called pulse on the political winds of the nation; do the legwork and go to the different Burroughs and speak to actual working men and women, not just inbred wealthy trust fundies at upper east side parties…
Maybe then, I’ll change my mind. Maybe not.
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Just to be contrarian (yes they’re often well deserving of the FTFNYT monicker) they’re alos the newspaper that made the 1619 Project, which goes a very VERY long way towards redemption.
But yeah Bobo, Cardinal “Chunky Reese Witherspoon” Douthat, and Bretbug are a pox on the world of opinion writing.
(Don’t they also pubish Megan McArgelbargle or is that the WaPo? )
As an academic-type I get them both quite cheep in online form. $10/month. The killer is I also support my local rag which is thinner and thinner every day, for more and more money every year , north of $500 per annum last time I paid. Supporting local journalism is important but it’s getting harder and harder to do.
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I have not read NYT since I was in school in the early Seventies. My economics professor brought a clipping which he projected onto a screen in the classroom. I apologize for not remembering what it was about. In truth, I have not held a paper newspaper since 2019, when I gave up on the local Public Library. I think the Library might be open again; but I have adapted to getting my news and opinions from the Interweb Tubes. I am waiting for Dr. Fauci and President Biden to give me an “All Clear.”
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Starbucks quit the FNYT didn’t it?
Idk, I don’t go in S’bux anymore, neither.
After about a 25 yr daily habit I don’t look or link the NYfkers since they published the nonsense that for some physics Actions the Reactions can be 100-1000 times more, saying that Sir Isaac was wrong and that the NYT knows that for every (potential energy) Action the (kinetic energy) Reaction is not necessarily equal and opposite.
Since they published that 20 years ago, I’ve never read a word they’ve written. And I distrust the sensibility of anyone who cites them.
Now they offer to give me their daily news fables for free.
None for me no thanks even if I was out of toilet paper.
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Speak for yourself, snob.
I’m from Louisiana, that laboratory of democracy which proudly pioneered the form of govt the entire US is now adopting — the Dictatorship of the Lumpenproletariat. I myself am lumpenprole, out, loud and proud. I am proud of my home state, because however dubious the end in sight of the march towards the form of govt that it started, it has proven itself a vanguard element.
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