The New York Times’ App Plan Isn’t Working, So It’s Laying Off Staff

http://recode.net/2014/10/01/the-new-york-times-app-plan-isnt-working-so-its-laying-off-staff/

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

70 75 12 years ago

jstalin• 12 years ago

I subscribe to the Times for its news content. No way I was going to pay an additional $6 a month for more opinions. Frankly, the NYT's opinion page already borders on propaganda.

beerbajay• 12 years ago

Yeah, the opinion section is the worst part of NYT, though I'm sure it's a driver of much of the traffic, at least judging from the "most read" and "most emailed" sidebars. I suspect that the by turns vague and inflammatory headlines are great as clickbait, but not something people actively seek out. And anyway, it's not like David Brooks (ever?) has anything interesting to say.

briandear3• 12 years ago

Yes. That is ridiculous. $6 for opinion? I have opinions and I'll provide them for free. Their opinion section isn't even that good. I could read White House press releases and come away with more insight.

matkam• 12 years ago

This is terrible news, NY Times being one of few news organizations providing quality journalism. Hope they can figure out a way to keep running without degrading their quality.

brandonmenc• 12 years ago

They should take donations, as in "$8 a week plus anything extra you can give to help us keep the lights on."

Readers feel strongly about this organization - there must be some who want to give more.

ics2• 12 years ago

Keep the lights on in our 52 floor, RPBW/FXFOWLE-designed, midtown Manhattan skyscraper. I'm pretty sure those people who want to give more are probably happier to get their name on the wall in the downstairs lobby rather than pay $10/week for their newspaper. :)

prostoalex2• 12 years ago

They sort of do https://nytimesathome.com/hd/205 except they insist delivering you an actual weekday paper in exchange for $4.25 a week donation.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

>>> organizations providing quality journalism

If you're a liberal, I'm sure its pretty fantastic. As someone who considers themselves an independent, this newspaper is unabashedly liberal.

Perhaps this is having an effect on its subscribers?

Why are subscribers (and advertisers) of The New York Times fleeing to other newspapers (such as the Wall Street Journal, whose circulation numbers have remained steady), or to other avenues such as Fox News, for their news and information?

There is only one answer: The New York Times has a proclivity towards left-wing bias and unbalanced reporting of the news.

Even a cursory glance of the paper reveals its pervasive editorializing, which comes through loud and clear everywhere from page one to the obituaries. But just as damaging to it than its left-wing slant has been its complete lack of interest in any stories having the remotest possibility of tarnishing the hallowed image of President Barack Obama, an image which it and other members of the so-called "main-stream media" has had such an active role in creating.

source (2009): http://www.newsrealblog.com/2009/10/21/liberal-bias-is-killi...

Karunamon2• 12 years ago

A 5 year old source consisting of some random blogger with the identical unsubstantiated "liberal media!!!1" canard used by Fox and the like is probably not the best source to use when trying to make a factual argument about media bias.

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

What does that even mean, "independent"? Independent of what? You just don't care about politics?

briandear3• 12 years ago

"Quality" .. perhaps in the non-political areas. But when it comes to being objective, they are just an extension of the White House Propaganda department. Their coverage of Lois Lerner, for example has been exceedingly light. Their lack of in-depth Benghazi reporting is also ridiculous. They spend more ink writing about Goodnight Moon than they do about the Nidal Hassan terrorism case. I'm not asking the Times to agree with me.. just cover the news from a fair and balanced perspective. There is little or no diversity in that newsroom. It's all some variation of the N.E. white liberal viewpoint. It's almost like they look with disdain on any ideas that aren't following the party line. It's the US version of Pravda. Though, I do love there coverage on non-political, non-national security issues. I would pay to subscribe to the Cooking section for sure.

StefanKarpinski2• 12 years ago

The NY Times really needs to stop with the nickel and dime differential pricing tactics. Every time I consider getting a subscription, I look at the options and get pissed off: they are either artificially limited to only some of my devices (phone or tablet, but not both) or absurdly expensive at $8.75/week for access on all devices. NY Times, this is bullshit: if I'm going to be a subscriber, I want a reasonable rate and unlimited access to all of what the publication has to offer but I'm not going to pay $455/year for it. If you stop jerking your readers around and give them a good deal, you may be surprised by how many would be willing to subscribe.

e40• 12 years ago

Agreed. Back when you could give them somewhere around $8/mo, I did that. A few months later, they emailed saying they were canceling the plan. I think a lot of people would happily give them $8/mo for no incremental cost. That's all to the bottom line.

cwyers4• 12 years ago

They used to be able to support their main business with the print revenues, and the online subscribers were all (as you note) marginal money on top of that. With print revenues declining, that may not be possible anymore, and if it still is possible it probably isn't for much longer. They need to find some way to transition to a model where digital-only revenue pays the bills.

marincounty• 12 years ago

Yea--they make it too confusing, and expensive. Offer a reasonable price for access to Everything--including archives. They emailed me so many times with pop up ads, or low introductructory access; I don't even bother to read their ads anymore. I don't think they realize just how fast people will look for that x box, it's like swatting an insect away from your face.

jrochkind1• 12 years ago

The cover price of the nytimes print is $2.50 and $6 on Sunday.

It's gone up a lot in the past decade, I remember when it was $1, I think. Although I am having surprising trouble finding historical single-issue or subscription print prices on the web.

But I think people used to pay hundreds of dollars a year for print subscriptions, even back when the weekday cover price was only $1. Of course, there was less competition for world news pre-internet, but, as much as I'm unwilling to pay those prices either, I also understand that there's no way they can keep producing the same coverage on orders of magnitude less income.

tekromancr• 12 years ago

Yea, but that's for print. Not operating a printing facility HAS to bring the costs down, no?

secabeen2• 12 years ago

It also felt like you were getting a lot more, with a guy dropping a physical paper off at your door every morning.

ics2• 12 years ago

For anyone who isn't aware, NYTimes has a steeply discounted subscription rate for college students that can be tremendously helpful for light research (it gives access to their full online archives): http://www.nytimes.com/College

jrockway2• 12 years ago

Sunday home delivery is cheaper than unlimited online access, but includes unlimited online access. I go that route.

One of my neighbors started stealing the paper, recently, so I don't even have to take it to the recycling bin myself. What a deal! Not exactly how I'd run _my_ business, though.

Ultimately, I read the Times every day on my phone and computer, and often peruse the archives, so I'd be happy to pay more. But I'd like transparency and to not play the game that ups their offline circulation numbers.

I'd also like the ads to go away, so that I'm paying for the journalism, not the advertisers. But whatever, I'll take what I can get.

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

It's violently offensive that I have to take delivery of a giant rolled-up paper bale every week if I want a good deal on unlimited digital access.

Until the rocket scientists at the NYT get that through their pointy little heads, nothing is going to change.

timsally3• 12 years ago

If you stop jerking your readers around and give them a good deal, you may be surprised by how many would be willing to subscribe.

If you don't think $450 is worth unlimited online access and home delivery for the Sunday edition, I'm not sure what to do for you. The main cost of reading the news is the time you lose. Why would you spend several hours per week reading something that you think isn't worth $8 per week? It's an inherently contradictory position.

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

Why would you spend several hours per week reading something that you think isn't worth $8 per week?

Worms, meet the world outside the can. You're going to love it.

AnthonyMouse3• 12 years ago

The main cost of reading the news is the time you lose. Why would you spend several hours per week reading something that you think isn't worth $8 per week?

There are at least two valid reasons. First, the time cost and the money cost are additive. It could be that you value reading the news at more than the time it takes to do it but not by $450/year.

Second, there is an opportunity cost. It's plausible that you might be choosing between two newspapers that have comparable coverage, in which case the subscription rate (or lack thereof) could easily break the tie.

yid• 12 years ago

I want a reasonable rate and unlimited access to all of what the publication has to offer but I'm not going to pay $455/year for it.

Would it help if you thought of the New York Times not as that disposable paper publication available for roughly $3 at every airport and newsstand, but as a hip new digital news service that sources original journalism from trained professionals, and curates that content by an (ideally) independent cadre of other professionals?

How much would you pay for that hot new subscription service, to fund the level of baseline quality you get from the NYT? I don't know about you, but even $5/week doesn't sound completely unreasonable, to have something a little more sober than Buzzfeed and Vice.

chime• 12 years ago

How much would you pay for that hot new subscription service, to fund the level of baseline quality you get from the NYT? I don't know about you, but even $5/week doesn't sound completely unreasonable.

I don't know. But I pay $8.95 a month for Netflix, another $9 for Hulu Plus, another $9 for Spotify. I also get Amazon Prime for about $8/month and HN/reddit are free. It's not whether NYT is worth $35+/mo, it's whether I can derive $35/mo of utility from it.

Implicated• 12 years ago

I was with you until you put Vice in bed with Buzzfeed.

I agree that given the content is what you're looking for, the price really isn't that obscene. But the nickle and dime/piecemeal aspect of it is.

jonathansizz• 12 years ago

One of the NYTs main competitors is The Guardian, who now have a pretty nice app themselves, free with ads or ~$4/month for the premium version (which is ad-free and includes interactive crosswords and some premium content).

With the Guardian website also being totally free and their online circulation rapidly increasing, I'd say the NYT should be watching carefully.

veidr• 12 years ago

COMPLETELY agree. In fact, just 3 days ago I managed to cancel my NY Times subscription entirely, precisely for the reason you mention.

I'd been paying them $240 a year for their hackassed 'you can read it on a tablet and the web but not on a phone' plan. Then I got the new iPhone XXL, and suddenly was interested in reading news on my phone after all (since this new model finally has a screen big enough to read text on).

But I couldn't, due to having the wrong subscription type, and then I had to do the multiple-annoying-step process of finding the old subscription, turning it off, then adding the new subscription that let me read it on a phone and the web but NOT on a tablet... at the end of which their app told me I had to log in. Which I did, but it then told me 'Fuck you, customer, that email is associated with a different subscription' (to paraphrase).

So I just canceled everything and deleted the NY Times app.

In this era, it's an amazing achievement to get a lot of people willing to pay money to read your news content. It's sad that the NY Times fucked that up so badly with their insane pricing and convoluted subscription choices.

rconti• 12 years ago

The NYTimes subscription model is one of the few benign-sounding things in the world that makes me actively angry.

Their pricing model charges you X for Web access. Okay so far. They've decided to charge for content. Fine.

Their pricing model charges you (X+Y) for web+smartphone. I'm not going to say this is stupid, because obviously apps cost money to develop. Sure, it's the same content I'm viewing on 2 devices, but I'm downloading some app that took literally WEEKS to develop, so I get it.

Their pricing model charges you (X+Z) for web+tablet. This is starting to get silly because I can't really understand why a tablet app costs more to develop than a smartphone app, and anyway, I'm already paying for your content in the "web" portion.

Here's where it gets insulting, and where I refuse to give them a goddamned penny. Web+smartphone+tablet. First off, you're telling me that it's not good enough to pay for web+tablet? I have to pay extra for a smartphone on top of that? Okay, but surely I pay a discounted smartphone rate, right? It's, like, (X+Z+(.5Y)), right? There's no way the esteemed NYTimes would think their customers are so bloody stupid as to not only pay for smartphone access on top of tablet access, but pay FULL PRICE for said smartphone access, right?

WRONG.

NYTimes wants you to pay 2X+Y+Z for web+web+tablet+smartphone access. Look it up, I'm not joking here. They insist that their product is so valuable, that not only should you pay extra to access their web content on a tablet or smartphone, and not only should you pay the SAME AMOUNT for each of the web+tablet+smartphone, they think their customers are so bloody stupid that they should double pay for web content. Their most valuable customers, who want to pay for all digital access should be the ones who get ripped the most.

And, as pointed out elsewhere in these comments, this is more than paying for dead trees shipped to your house every day, and throwing them in the trash.

And then their advertising materials treat their allegedly valuable content as if I'm buying some cut-rate TV service. 4 week teaser rates. Really? 4 week discounts on content that, I'd hope, most users would plan to subscribe to for years if not decades?

Get over yourselves, NYTimes. You've turned a class of people who would otherwise respect your work and who actually desire to pay for it into people who actively dislike you and celebrate your failure.

protonfish• 12 years ago

Newspapers and magazines were traditionally funding by advertising with subscriptions fees only to cover printing and delivery costs and as a concrete measure of dedicated readership. Moving to web publishing, printing and delivery costs are nearly 0 and readership is easily measured. But, instead of pushing ad revenue into the information age, they've thrown their heavy-handed weight behind subscriptions which work like death to online readership, then crying that it's their everyone else's fault they are losing money. I don't know what mental malfunction caused this unilateral suicide spiral, but they should probably stop making the same mistake and expecting different results and start focusing on innovation in online advertising (especially selling its value to your traditional clients.)

sd8f9iu• 12 years ago

The internet has been decimating traditional news journalism's profits – whether online or offline – for more than a decade now. What do you mean they weren't "pushing ad revenue into the information age?" What were they supposed to do differently? The only news providers I hear about doing remotely well off of online advertising are ones with click-bait headlines and viral content, quite a different style from the NYT.

And how are they "crying that it's everyone else's fault they are losing money?"

jallmann2• 12 years ago

readership is easily measured

This is probably a big part of the problem. Online ad revenues aren't going to equal those for print, simply because there is so much more visibility into targeting, reach and conversions. Thus, advertisers have a much better idea of the value of an impression/click, and can price accordingly, rather than indiscriminately shot-gunning eyeballs as in print.

Entrenched cost structures contribute to the problem, but the fact is that paying a professional staff to produce quality content every day costs a lot of money, and online there are fewer dollars coming in per reader, even if the total audience is much larger. The exception to this downward trend is if you have content catering to highly lucrative niches such as insurance or banking (although I don't know how these compare to similarly placed print ads).

Premium video has a similar problem; advertising revenue is unsustainable for anything other than indie YouTube shows. The broadcast TV model could never work on the Internet.

At least, that's my theory.

prostoalex2• 12 years ago

Premium video has a similar problem

For premium, wouldn't the conversion be easier? Having HBO bill me $12/month through my cable company or $12/month through their app doesn't make a difference to me as an already paying user.

subdane• 12 years ago

The simple fact is that the Times revenue off print ads was an order (or two) of magnitude in difference. Online, the Times is competing against Google and Facebook CPCs and there's no way to get a high enough value/volume to make up for the lost print revenue.

cwyers4• 12 years ago

The thing about ad revenue in the information age is that it's a pittance compared to what newspapers used to pull in. Classified ads were a major revenue source of revenue for newspapers. Craigslist has cannibalized that business. Craiglist has cost the newspaper industry billions of dollars[1] and made millions in return.[2] Here's a 2009 article:[3]

"Many newspaper executives view Craigslist as a nemesis because it doesn't charge for most ads. As Craigslist and scores of other websites have offered free or less expensive alternatives, newspapers' total revenue from the classified advertising in print editions has waned from a peak of nearly $20 billion in 2000 to about $10 billion last year.

Meanwhile, Craigslist has been raking in more revenue from the ad listings that it does charge for in major U.S. markets. Most of the money comes from help-wanted ads — another former cash cow for newspapers that has been drying up.

Craigslist's annual revenue has risen from just $7 million in 2003 to $81 million last year, according to the AIM Group. Based on its count of paid ads appearing on Craigslist in recent months, the company's revenue should be about $100 million this year, the consultants predicted."

Craigslist is that whole "your margin is my opportunity" thing everyone loves to throw around. Craigslist took over the market because they charged less than anyone else, and they could charge less because their margin on classified ads was lower than anybody's. Newspapers couldn't compete with Craigslist on margins because they were using those margins to subsidize the actual news-gathering apparatus, which was a loss leader to get people to buy the paper so they could put ads in it.

1) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/13/ny-nyu-stern-schoo... 2) http://aimgroup.com/2012/11/07/craigslist-2012-revenues-incr... 3) http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7804695

danso• 12 years ago

Judging as purely an outsider...it wouldn't surprise me if the Opinion App was little more than a prestige project for that particular department to have as a feather in its cap, rather than something that the Times' innovators organically thought was a real revenue generator...there's just no precedent for an opinion spin-off app...general news apps aren't even doing that well, why would they seriously think that consumers would have fun juggling through two different news apps, nevermind the news consumers already get through general browsing of the web or through social media?

It's not surprising that a large organization would have throwaway products, it's just a shame for a financially-strapped org to continue having such bureaucratic machinations at such a critical time in its history.

vermooten• 12 years ago

Even if I wanted to subscribe, I can't see anywhere obvious on the home page of how to do it.

stdgy2• 12 years ago

Does your home screen look different?

http://i.imgur.com/FBBIYLR.png

secabeen2• 12 years ago

Apropos of nothing, I hate short term promotional pricing. On that page, you can't tell how much it costs after the promotional period ends.

navait• 12 years ago

AdBlock seems to disable that button. I had to go to the bottom of the page to subscribe.

tomdale• 12 years ago

I read the New York Times and subscribe to the Sunday paper (grudgingly; the online subscription is perversely more expensive than allowing them to leave a piece of paper on my doorstep every Sunday!)

The Times puts up too many obstacles to becoming a subscriber in the digital age, as others have mentioned.

Also, either I'm oblivious or they're doing a terrible job marketing their spinoffs. I read the Times daily, on both my phone and at a desktop, and am definitely in their target demo for NYT Cooking, but I haven't even heard of it. I already subscribe to Cook's Illustrated and visit sites like Serious Eats regularly; how is it I didn't know about their new venture?

(http://cooking.nytimes.com/ looks amazing, by the way. I'm disappointed I had to hear about it in the context of these job cuts.)

yupmetoo• 12 years ago

I found it extremely easy to become a subscriber via an online webform, but far more difficult to cancel as you have to do it via phone call with someone paid to keep you subscribing.

swartkrans• 12 years ago

One of the New York Times' problems of monetizing is relying on what is an essentially an honor system for accessing content. Anyone can just simply view all of the New York Times for free in an incognito window. To pay the subscription is an avoidance of compunction, but not a necessity. This is probably an irrational business proposition.

bitroliest• 12 years ago

They changed their pricing for the crossword subscription too, limiting the back catalog and forcing an upgrade to iOS 7. They lost a long time subscriber, who will probably be switching to Android since that was the only thing keeping me on iPhones.

subpixel• 12 years ago

I am a digital subscriber and I have never heard of these apps. I login to the site, and I have some iPhone app I got long ago. I think there's definitely a marketing problem, although I can honestly say the idea of paying the Times more than once for multiple apps is a non-starter to me.

Theodores• 12 years ago

Personally I am shocked that they still do a print edition that should have gone the way of vinyl records by now. Instead they should have a weekly print edition that is glossy and great for people that like to read actual paper at the weekends - we all have parents like that, don't we?

Paywall hasn't delivered the results for Mr Murdoch or anyone else in the UK that have gone that route. The highly invested in The Guardian and the Daily Mail are doing very nicely in the UK and around the world. Which is interesting because the UK is a smaller country than the US and the newspapers-of-old converged on London and gave up on the regions a long time ago. (The Guardian used the be The Manchester Guardian). The problem with U.S. titles is the brands are too geographic - NY Times is New York which is not a global thing and New York really is not the centre of the universe.

The Guardian do not make money. However charging people to read the news is not possible in the UK when the BBC do it all for free. Hence The Guardian run the ads, charge for the dating/car-buying/employment options.

These news organisations that complain need to go away. It is easier than ever to put together 'news', the extra bits they need beyond the standard newswire feed - Associated Press et al. - can be grabbed off of the internets. Journalists haven't been getting out and about for a while, they just cut and paste. What disappoints me more is this:

http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/AND-FINALLY/

A 'zine shutting down.

briandear3• 12 years ago

If the NY Times would actually be objective and not a shill for a particular political party, then I might care.

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

Yeah, they really turned me off when they started banging the war drums for Dubya's little Iraq adventure.

Oh, wait, that's probably not what you were referring to at all, is it?

declan• 12 years ago

The New York Times' public editor Dan Okrent addressed this a decade ago; the question has been asked and answered and may not be really worth debating again, I suspect.

Some excerpts from that self-critique:

"Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is. ... These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-...

"if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world...

"On a topic that has produced one of the defining debates of our time, Times editors have failed to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires. This has not occurred because of management fiat, but because getting outside one's own value system takes a great deal of self-questioning...

The NYT is a remarkable institution capable of arguably the best news reporting on the planet when it collectively sets its mind to a task. It will cover the difficult local topics like NYC homelessness and public school failures that are a poorer fit for the Post or WSJ. I have friends who work there; my editor before I left to found recent.io is now a NYT editor. But the above critique was true when written in 2004 and is even more true today.

nitrobeast• 12 years ago

The 'pay wall' of NYT is just for show. Use incognito mode to browse as much as you want on nytimes.com

halayli• 12 years ago

If their subscription meant no ads showing up then I would have happily kept it.

cyphunk• 12 years ago

the internet is stateless. you're traction is going to be limited if you only represent a narrow geographically limited viewpoint.

The New York Times’ App Plan Isn’t Working, So It’s Laying Off Staff

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