Solutions, Part 2 of 2— How can The New York Times and other news outlets grow their subscribers and product value?

Published in

Sanjeev Arora

11 min readNov 6, 2022

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer or any other institution.

This article is part 2 of the How can The New York Times and other news outlets grow their subscribers and product value? — Part 1 of 2. I would highly recommend that you visit part 1 before reading this article below.

In part 1, we covered the current state of the news outlet landscape, the history of The New York Times (NYT), and its innovation journey. We also listed some critical questions to help develop a strategic roadmap and shared a few fundamentals that the management team may revisit to grow their subscriber loyalty. Now, we will discuss various solutions that the New York Times and other news outlets could consider to grow their subscribers.

Solutions

Section 1 — Strengthen your core
Section 2 — Develop adjacent businesses
Section 3 — Explore the white space
Section 4 — Enhancements

Section 1 — Strengthen Your Core

Build a Super App —

The New York Times (NYT) has a plethora of valuable digital properties under its umbrella. See a comprehensive list at the end of this article below. Even with all these amazing digital properties and valuable acquisitions like Audm, Wirecutter (approx. $30m), and The Athletic (approx. $550m), the total number of subscribers is not at the levels where it could be for North America. The New York Times app itself is not sticky enough for the subscribers to spend more time on the app consuming different types of content. For e.g., NYT could nudge a sports fan subscriber during their team’s offseason period to consume content from the wirecutter or to play a game to maintain app engagement. This approach is possible if relevant NYT digital properties are experienced as a “Super App”. The super app is built as a user-centric platform to deliver multiple standalone apps as an ecosystem. With an NYT Super App, the subscriber behavior will also be more holistic to offer personalized, valuable content through an engaging experience. This will also strengthen NYT’s Ad placement relevance (more on the irrelevant ads that NYT has under section 4 enhancements).

Here are some of the core products or services that can be combined in an NYT Super App. The content experience and design are specific to the content type (audio vs article) but all these apps below are accessible from a single app.

The News app — this is the current NYT app that has consistent subscriber growth but is nowhere near its growth potential. The app could offer more content that is presented as a smart take on complex topics (political, scientific), is full of educational insights, and is not polarized. With the right design, it could also bring the TimesWire approach as a personalized feed to grow user engagement. The content of many NYT newsletters can also be enhanced with bite-sized, engaging content (with optional long-form details) similar to Morning Brew, and Axios.com. Currently, the newsletters just appear as a long list along with many other section names and are easily overlooked.
Consumer content and shop app — NYT has already seen the value of the content offered by Wirecutter then why not combine its value into a super app instead of a standalone subscription? With new players like Bustle in the news form content and commerce space, it is evident that the market is growing. There is obviously a subscriber segment in the market that can be converted from Bustle or Wirecutter into a full-blown super app subscription but only when they get to experience the value of the super app.
An audio-only content app — Could NYT offer all long-form journalism in the audio format via its new super app? Apps like Medium are already offering the audio version of each article that is powered by an Artificial Intelligence app. NYT is already offering long-form journalism in audio as a standalone experience via the Audm app but this powerful format is also valuable to its current News app. NYT can also bring new offerings in the audio-only content app like original shows they produce via its Serial acquisition, all of their existing podcasts, and audiobooks (also recently announced by Spotify in the US).
Video-only content app — In my previous article, I shared a chart on how long it took for many social media companies to acquire over a billion monthly active users (MAUs). Among them, Tik Tok gained over a billion MAUs in the shortest time horizon of 5.1 years by tapping into the emotions evoked by videos. Comparatively, the NYT video-only content is negligible and hidden somewhere under the “videos” section of the news app. I am not suggesting that NYT should create unhealthy, addictive video apps like Tik Tok, Facebook, or YouTube but surfacing relevant video content in an engaging manner has a huge value to the subscribers. NYT could build a dedicated video experience that is more like the TED talks app or other streaming video apps like Netflix.
Academic and Research Papers app — NYT can easily build and introduce an app that offers a curated list of peer-reviewed academic papers and research publications. It will help educate its subscribers on emerging trends and the latest innovations across multiple disciplines. They could link such papers to NYT Op-Eds, and news articles when reporting any latest developments in an area or to provide deeper background on specific topics. These curated papers would come from verified experts from across the industry, academia, scientific communities, government officials, etc., and they would be responsible for the accuracy of the information that will build further trust with the NYT subscribers. Here is an example of a venture-funded startup that is offering a search tool for peer-reviewed research — https://consensus.app/.
Learning and Education app— The School of The New York Times could expand the scope of the learning experience and attract new subscribers from all ages and backgrounds. NYT could offer their official courses from The School of The New York Times with other partners like LinkedIn Learning, Masterclass, etc. to add further value to the NYT subscription.
Thematic learning app — Continuing with the topic of learning and education, NYT already offers some level of theme-based learning in long-form, mixed-media format. See this saved PDF example of an article with multiple historic photos of the 1947 India/Pakistan partition (source NYT link). This static format can be designed as an engaging storyline experience along with NYT Op-Eds, articles, research, laws, audio/video interviews, books, etc. This thematic learning content could be based on historical or current events. For e.g. Gay rights movement, the 13th Amendment, Abortion laws, etc. NYT has valuable assets like the TimesMachine Archives which can also be integrated into this new storyline experience.
The Search app — Think of it as a search engine with a purpose that has curated content from all NYT digital properties and assets. It surfaces news, sports, entertainment, podcasts, videos, books as well as consumer goods reviewed on Wirecutter to buy. It can offer content from selected industry partners too. If the experience and the technology to power the search relevance are built properly as an app, it can easily grow engagement and attract new subscribers. If Google can offer dedicated sites like news.google.com, then so can NYT which publishes its own original content. Such a purposeful search engine with vetted content can also become a powerful research tool for many new subscriber personas like students, teachers, journalists, knowledge workers, investors, government officials, and more.

With the launch of an NYT Super App, their subscription model could possibly evolve from something like the “Apple One Bundle” 💸 which covers multiple apps/services as individual and family plans to corporate accounts like Bloomberg research.

Section 2 — Develop Adjacent Businesses

Launch an NYT Publishing House

Many NYT journalists are also acclaimed authors and have published many remarkable bestsellers in the market through 3rd party publishing houses (full list of US publishers). As an independent, adjacent business line, NYT could easily tap into its print and digital publishing capabilities to launch its own book publishing house like many of the prominent universities have done in the country. For e.g. Harvard Business Publishing Education, Wharton School Publishing, Stanford University Press, etc. The NYT publishing house would launch books (paperback, digital, audio) written by their own staff as well as other independent authors to generate additional revenues.

Launch an NYT Video Streaming Channel

The NYT is built upon the fundamentals of investigative journalism. They produce original news stories and create a lot of content (news, audio/video recordings) that could be turned into short movies, shows, or series for a video streaming channel. The NYT team is already engaged in creating content on NYT YouTube Channel that could evolve into what you normally see on channels like OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, Vice Shows, Vox Videos, etc. For e.g., NYT could bring special guest interviews for talk shows from various news stories, op-eds, and bestselling book authors. They could also bring both local and foreign investigative reports as documentaries. Such a video streaming channel can be offered with the NYT Super App bundle plan to create another differentiation in the market.

Launch Storytelling with Data as a Service

Within the NYT’s advertising business they currently offer custom content creation services for brands. The TBrand Studio has a service that gives brands the ability to publish engaging content for various purposes like product marketing, public awareness, and also advertising on the NYT based on rich audience data. To generate additional revenues this content creation service can be expanded to create rich storytelling with data service typically done by specialized agencies like Darkhorse Analytics.

Double Down on Niche Acquisitions of Key Digital Properties

Across various categories, the NYT has many opportunities to acquire digital properties that can help grow its subscriber base at a faster pace. For e.g., within the lifestyle category, there are niche digital properties like The Points Guy (TPG). Since 2010, TPG has evolved into a lifestyle media brand with 10 million unique visitors a month and a social media audience of over 3 million across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. TPG provides guidance on how to maximize your travel and reward points earned through various credit cards, loyalty programs, etc. Such an acquisition will not only bring new readers but also talented employees with diverse backgrounds in growth marketing.

Section 3 — Explore the White Space

Conduct Frequent Experiments to Launch New Services

To compete with social media apps and other news outlets in the digital space, it is crucial for the NYT to experiment with new technologies and experiences. Similar to how Disney has managed to innovate with the help of its Imagineering group, the NYT can bring together professionals from diverse backgrounds to experiment with new ideas on an ongoing basis. The NYT product innovation group may explore areas such as —

How might our subscribers earn lifestyle products or service rewards from our brand advertisers as well as the NYT?
How might we (the NYT) add a digital wallet to our Super App with a rewards card?

Experimenting with such use cases listed above could lead to new customer insights, revenue streams, or value-added services that are outside of a typical news agency.

Section 4 —Enhancements

The NYT employs amazing talent that is already producing some of the best digital media content from across the world. They have access to top investigative journalists, professional content creators (photographers, videographers, editors), exceptional storytellers, the best technologists, and data engineers in the industry. So, why are they not addressing some of these basic product issues listed below to gain more subscribers?

Some product feature enhancements to consider —

Improve advertising relevance and personalization — As a subscriber I come across frequent ads on the NYT website that are not personalized and are mostly irrelevant. For e.g., showing gourmet food and electric scooter ads to a reader (me) who is consumed by a sad historic event story like India’s Partition: A History in Photos on India’s independence day was not going to generate any ad clicks (I wish I took the screenshot when I saw those ads). The NYT can take advantage of powerful data-driven ad platforms like The Trade Desk, Xandr, and OpenWeb to not only improve ad personalizations to grow subscriber engagement but also uncover identity data graphs securely to attract brands and grow ad revenue.
Targeting Social Media Users — Bring users from the social media accounts of NYT journalists by using teaser content as opposed to redirecting users to social media sites from NYT articles. I covered how NYT was driving users away from its content in the fundamentals list section — Build a community with journalists and grow engagement as part of the previous article.
Grow app value — Just like LinkedIn added multiple emotions (see sample image below) to the posts, could the NYT allow theme-based tag selection (as icons or text) to learn from its reader community about the posted content? An article could have multiple tags for journalists and readers to choose from, e.g. under the politics section (theme) users could pick conservative, polarized, or business section (theme) with tags like verified data, emerging technology, etc. NYT could also crowd-source these thematic tags from its readers through a pre-defined tags list or from internal journalists with different backgrounds and expertise. This approach could lead to potential growth in trust and reader engagement as they will find the NYT sources more reliable to fight misinformation.

Experiment with the use of independent reviews — Allow the ability for journalists to always engage external experts as part of the article review board for complex topics. This review is different from just having “quotes” from experts as part of the story. NYT could display industry experts’ point-of-view as a synopsis with their bios as part of the published content. This could help avoid bias and echo chambers at the NYT and build further trust with the readers.
Rethink design and user experience — the NYT website is simply an attempt to replicate a physical newspaper on a web page that offers limited visual real estate. In the example below, you can see a large header section with an advertisement that takes more room than the prominent cover page news article. This design approach is what drives readers away from the NYT website to consume the same content via other social media sites.

Conclusion

I believe that the digital future is bright for all reputable news agencies across the world. They need to think of themselves as multi-media publishers and content creators like the “Disney” company. They need to look beyond the news publishing business and offer exceptional Super App experience. The NYT could also benefit from many more advisors, board members, and senior executives from the likes of Netflix or Disney with deep expertise in how to derive value from original content, monetize creators, and gain subscribers from across the world.

List of prominent New York Times digital properties and sections -

The NYT management team — https://www.nytco.com/company/people/
The School of The New York Times — https://nytedu.com/
The T magazine — https://www.nytimes.com/section/t-magazine
The Learning Network — Teach and learn with The Times: Resources for bringing the world into your classroom — https://www.nytimes.com/section/learning
Parenting — https://www.nytimes.com/section/parenting
The Upshot — https://www.nytimes.com/section/upshot
Graphics — Data visualization, maps, and other visual journalism from The New York Times Graphics Desk — https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/graphics
Jobs — https://www.nytimes.com/section/jobs
Games — https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords
Events — https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/nyt-events
Real Estate — https://www.nytimes.com/section/realestate
Video — https://www.nytimes.com/video
Newsletters — https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters
Wirecutter — https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/
The Athletic — https://theathletic.com/
Audm — https://www.audm.com/ — news — https://www.nytco.com/press/the-new-york-times-company-acquires-audm/
Cooking — https://cooking.nytimes.com/
Over 150 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared — https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/
The School of The New York Times — https://nytedu.com/
Podcasts — https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/podcasts
NYT Store — https://store.nytimes.com/