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Comment by hamhock666 | Hacker News Reader

Don't people already pay for things like the NYT?

I guess local papers might be harder, they may have to demonstrate they can reveal the journalistic failures of other papers in local affairs.

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Nobody pays for news from the NYT. NYT is a game developer that also provides news on the side. Their games are their main draw; my gf subscribes and never reads the news.

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/29/wordle-nyt-games-news-media...

The legacy media were advertising companies who also happened to provide news. People aren't willing to subscribe for advertising, but they will for games.

If we're going by anecdata, here's another data point: I subscribe to NYT and don't play any of their games. Yes, I read it for the articles but also, to a large degree, for the subscriber comments as well. Similarly to the reason I frequent Hacker News. And to stay up to date with what has been my home for a long time. And also NYT Cooking, though I only access that once in a blue moon.

It's fascinating to me that people would pay to read obvious political propaganda.

I get that the state-sponsored "news" in many EU countries is heavily politically coloured, but why would something like NYT be if they have paying subscribers? I never did the research, but I'm guessing they must have huge additional streams of income besides payments from readers?

It's a form of tithing. You give to the propagandists providing the slant you align with, even if they're wealthy billionaires. It's been common for belief communities for centuries. Poor people do it for access to wealthy individuals or as a form of gambling on the promises of the propaganda, and wealthy individuals, when they give, are also doing so for influence (access to poor people en masse). Its propaganda all the way down.

It's just called exchanging money for goods and services. When did HN contract reddit's obsession with billionaires in every thread?

It's depressing to see the paper that once had the courage to publish the Pentagon Papers seen as publishing political propaganda.

What alternative revenue incentive do you see that could support independent journalism?

Don’t take it too seriously. NYT reporting contrary to the reader’s politics = propaganda/shilling. NYT reporting in line with the reader’s politics = hard hitting journalism speaking truth to power.

You think nobody accused the NYT of propaganda during the Pentagon Papers years? Or ultimately, any other publication during any other period? What's new?

Traditionally it was ads that contributed most of the money a newspaper took in, but the fact that people were paying for the paper re-assured the people buying the ads that the papers were actually being read.

NYT is an exception, or more specifically it's much bigger than most other news shops and has the luxury of having a large loyal customer base, a brand reputation to defend, and a full time business analysis and data science team to upkeep its excellence. Your local papers are barely scraping by and are mostly owned by hedge funds whose primary objective to squeeze the consumer via judicial usage of paywalls and clickbaits. A commitment to truth and deep investigative reporting for them does not keep the lights on. The other papers and magazines are all subsidized by billionaires or other vested interests. The price for those is indoctrination.

> NYT is an exception

> The other papers and magazines are all subsidized by billionaires or other vested interests.

How is the NYT an exception?

a large paid subscription base

That's no different from the other papers and magazines.

Paid subscriptions have never been a significant source of revenue to newspapers. They relied on advertisements, just like the websites that killed them.

That's not entirely true for NYT as OP mentioned. NYT is 170 years old. They have been through many phases and models.

Luckily NYT is a public company and you can look up their revenue split on the SEC website going back to 1994. In 1994 they had 35% revenue from circulation vs 65% from ads. In 2021 it was 24% ads and 68% subscribers and 8% "Other"

The Washington Post is also a public company (before 2013). In their 2009 filing, they state that the newspaper's revenue (in 2008) was 51% ads, with the other 49% not attributed.

At that time operating expenses exceeded revenues by 25 million dollars, though this was not an immediate problem for them because they owned several other more profitable companies.

By contrast, in that same year the New York Times announced that they had managed to stave off insolvency by securing a large personal loan from Carlos Slim, who went on to become their biggest shareholder.

How are we distinguishing between these two newspapers? What's supposed to be "exceptional" about the New York Times?

Why are you looking at 2009? Is it because you think it fits your narrative? What happened in 2008 I wonder that may cause companies to be struggling? NYT is a profitable company with majority of their income coming from paid subscriptions. Does that answer your question about how they are different or do you wanna check their revenue split and financials in 1928 too?

A business secured a loan from a billionaire after the GFC and paid it off in 6 years. The billionaire also acquired a significant position in the business that he has mostly exited with a significant profit generated from the business subscription model. More on this crazy story as it unfolds at 11

It's no different -> Paid subscriptions have never been a significant source of revenue to newspapers -> well, they were struggling in 2009 -> ...

I'm looking at 2009 because the claim above was that newspapers other than the New York Times, but not the New York Times, are subsidized by billionaires, and 2009 is the year that the New York Times had to beg for a subsidy from a billionaire. Was that not clear from my comment?

How is taking a loan a subsidy? do you understand how loans work?

It's no different -> Paid subscriptions have never been a significant source of revenue to newspapers -> well, they were struggling in 2009 -> they took a loan that one time -> ...

If the NYT could sell those shares at the market price, they'd have been able to sell them to public markets. The only reason they'd possibly have to transacting with an individual is if there was something about the deal that exceeded the debt or equity financing available publicly.

What shares are you talking about? Debt != shares

From wikipedia:

> Slim's investments in the company included large purchases of Class A shares in 2011, when he increased his stake in the company to 8.1% of Class A shares,[43] and again in 2015, when he exercised stock options -- acquired as part of a repayment plan on the 2009 loan -- to purchase 15.9 million Class A shares, making him the largest shareholder.

[my emphasis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Company ]

Your point being? I just want a coherent response from you. Your initial question was how is the NYT different as you assumed they make all their money from a billionaire benefactor and that subscriptions are not a significant part of the income of any news paper. Now it's about that one year where their income wasn't doing well. And they took a loan. And the creditor bought stock that they sold later.

> by securing a large personal loan from Carlos Slim, who went on to become their biggest shareholder.

NYT has dual class shares. It’s run by the Sulzberger family despite Slim’s stake.

They are rich, but not billionaires.

That's creepy when you consider how much subscription to ALL newspapers has collapsed between 1994 and 2021.

Tells you how hard advertising collapsed in the same time period. I was at a small chain of local papers from about '09-'13. I saw it first hand.

Classifieds used to be a cash cow... not EASY money nessesairly, it's made $20 or so at the time, but it was a lot of money. Things like apartments for rent or cars for sale.

Then craigslist came a long and killed that.

Similarly ads went from large purchases, often for very large placements (we'd do things like sell rights to entire sections for flat fees), went to Pay Per Impression models paying hundreths of a cent, with no guarantees or minimums.

I’m reasonably sure that most of the national-level news media companies have been owned by millionaires (and now billionaires) for the last century. William Randolph Hearst, E.W. Scripps, the Ochs-Sulzberger family, Raoul H. Fleischmann, Cyrus H. K. Curtis are a few of the prominent wealthy owners of nationally-distributed news outlets and publications in 1925. Back farther to the Civil War you find more “independent” publications but it’s a challenge to determine which of them were privately owned by individuals of considerable wealth vs. those owned by their publishers who may or may not have been wealthy.

For a current breakdown, see: Index of News Media Ownership: https://futureofmedia.hsites.harvard.edu/index-us-mainstream...

Also NYT has spent a lot of time and energy into diversifying into things that are not news.

There is a subset of its customers that is only really paying for the games like the crossword. There is a subset only really paying for Cooking. etc.

Just like the old days, when people would subscribe to the daily newspaper for the crossword, the comics, the TV listings, the want ads, or the ads and coupons with the Sunday paper.

NYT is really just making the old newspaper model work in the new age, albeit with higher reliance on subscription revenue and less an ad revenue.

> The problem is that nobody would pay for it

User "api" said "nobody", so that is enough to refute their point. Some people would might pay for it, it seems.

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