Hacker News Reader

Comment by gh02t | Hacker News Reader

A desire to stay relevant. Print publishers often get criticized for being behind the curve, but a few like NYT and BBC have invested heavily in the technology of their business. Not sure how much it's paid off, but my impression is they aren't struggling as much as some.

I hope they manage to find the right combination to stay around, I loathe the dystopian future where Buzzfeed and Breitbart are the only news outlets.

View on HN

The NYT fortunately seems to be transitioning moderately well to digital at this point. They seem to have the wind at their back now. There was a period of time, spanning a decade or so, where it was very questionable if they'd make it or could survive on digital.

Their stock is at an 11 year high. Sales are growing again. Profitability looks set to surpass where they were several years ago. If it weren't for some stray costs & adjustments in Q4, they might have hit $100m+ in profit in 2017, the highest since 2010. Their balance sheet is solid, long-term debt is modest ($250m), and they have plenty of cash ($490m). Overall, it should be a good decade coming up for the NYT.

Buzzfeed isn’t comparable to Breitbart at all. Buzzfeed does real journalism these days.

Their news coverage is pretty strongly slanted to the left. Just because I tend to agree with them doesn't mean I think they are really that much better than Breitbart in terms of providing objective reporting.

In any event, what I meant was that I don't want a future where we only have sources of "news" that serve to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs, with everybody siloed into their own particular little bubbles.

The BBC publish magazines but I wouldn't describe them as a print publisher.

They're a broadcaster.

True, I was thinking news in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com