@yyninja: While the NY Times has seen substantial subscriber growth in the past three years and change as more and more people lose faith in their local papers but still crave some source of news, a lot of their profit is driven by the Crossword, NYT Cooking, Wirecutter referral links, Spelling Bee and now, I'm sure, however they sell the hell out of Wordle. Keep in mind that they also recently acquired The Athletic to greatly expand their reach in sports.
They also have one of the stronger and most consistently growing podcast networks that can be a bit easy to overlook: The Daily, Ezra Klein Show, Sway and The Argument are their flagships, but they release several articles in audio form as well, have a quite interesting and diverse music podcast in Popcast (despite its name, they'll deep dive new age revival music one week, TikTok trends the next and deep dive Tunnel culture of DMX-era hip-hop the next), keep their glasses lens cleaner nearby by hosting one of the very few prestige book review podcasts, cover queer perspectives via Modern Love and Still Processing, plus all their special event podcasts that generate tons of chatter (even if they've gotten into hot water with situations like the Caliphate pod).
The app version of the paper is, honestly, one of the smoothest and smartest looking apps I've ever seen, made even wilder by the way it seamlessly integrates into your entire phone experience in a way even huge social platforms like Instagram struggle with by still loading a webpage that interrupts with a "load in the app?" pop up.
It's still really easy to think of the NY Times as the same Old Grey Lady, but it's actually quickly become one of the more nimble, cash-rich and quick to act media organizations going. It honestly reminds me of the shift that happened at Apple during Steve Jobs' second stint, where it's become more about branding the Times as a space you want to hang out at and be associated with as much as it is a product that simply hopes to provide value for fees.
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