Not sure if it was all ads. Like how some of the biggest eras of music coincide with pirating music. Maybe you can squeeze some subscriptions by blocking people but over time it isn’t sustainable. When you provide an easily accessible platform that people want to come to, you can leverage that to other sales, not just ads.
If it wasn’t ads then what exactly was it? If free with ads was working, it would still be free.
You claim you can leverage that to other sales but it didn’t happen.
NYT is publicly traded. You can see their revenue, costs and everything. They made 2.5B in 1995 and 2.8B in 2025. Factoring inflation they have lost half their revenue. That means half the reporters lost their jobs.
Forcing people to pay like they used to pay for paper is working:
It worked for NYT because they already built a brand and had established customers. For others it failed. The model failed more than it succeeded aside from some special cases
They’re all switching back to providing content for free which would not happen if it failed. Only ones who can afford subscription model are ones that already established their brand and even then some failed
Yeah it wasn’t entirely ads, but that was the major factor along with the transition from print to digital.
Things do still have to get paid for. High quality journalism means paying high prices for journalists. There’s server costs and other overhead. Early on people were still buying the paper. Ads covered being able to put it online for free and people buying the paper paid the real bills.
As print died, that killed the main revenue stream. That meant more ads to keep the online side free and make money. But more ads meant people get more turned off by them and start using ad blockers. That kills that revenue stream, so you introduce a subscription that gives access to everything ad free.
Eventually, you get to where we are. You want it, you pay for it. Which is really just back to buying the paper, but digitally. Back in the day you bought the paper. Either you yourself did from the paper machine, a street corner paper stand, or you literally had a physical subscription and got it delivered. Or you read it for free when someone else paid for a delivery subscription, like the doctors office, the donut/coffee shop, or your work put it in the break room.
There is currently a subscription reversal because the model failed for now than it succeeded. NYT is in a spot where it could succeed off its established brand. But others it didn’t work. The trend is the subscription model fails. Times, WP, Atlantic and others couldn’t sustain it.
Also I’m left as fuck, I don’t care if quality is good or the model work to help some faceless group of shareholders. I’ll support whatever destroys anyone putting up pay walls online. Burn it all down. It’s the only way.
Not sure if it was all ads. Like how some of the biggest eras of music coincide with pirating music. Maybe you can squeeze some subscriptions by blocking people but over time it isn’t sustainable. When you provide an easily accessible platform that people want to come to, you can leverage that to other sales, not just ads.
If it wasn’t ads then what exactly was it? If free with ads was working, it would still be free.
You claim you can leverage that to other sales but it didn’t happen.
NYT is publicly traded. You can see their revenue, costs and everything. They made 2.5B in 1995 and 2.8B in 2025. Factoring inflation they have lost half their revenue. That means half the reporters lost their jobs.
Forcing people to pay like they used to pay for paper is working:
It worked for NYT because they already built a brand and had established customers. For others it failed. The model failed more than it succeeded aside from some special cases
Ads failed and subscriptions failed too so they went out of business. The free news model was tried for many years and failed.
Someone needs to pay the journalists’ salary.
They’re all switching back to providing content for free which would not happen if it failed. Only ones who can afford subscription model are ones that already established their brand and even then some failed
Yeah it wasn’t entirely ads, but that was the major factor along with the transition from print to digital.
Things do still have to get paid for. High quality journalism means paying high prices for journalists. There’s server costs and other overhead. Early on people were still buying the paper. Ads covered being able to put it online for free and people buying the paper paid the real bills.
As print died, that killed the main revenue stream. That meant more ads to keep the online side free and make money. But more ads meant people get more turned off by them and start using ad blockers. That kills that revenue stream, so you introduce a subscription that gives access to everything ad free.
Eventually, you get to where we are. You want it, you pay for it. Which is really just back to buying the paper, but digitally. Back in the day you bought the paper. Either you yourself did from the paper machine, a street corner paper stand, or you literally had a physical subscription and got it delivered. Or you read it for free when someone else paid for a delivery subscription, like the doctors office, the donut/coffee shop, or your work put it in the break room.
There is currently a subscription reversal because the model failed for now than it succeeded. NYT is in a spot where it could succeed off its established brand. But others it didn’t work. The trend is the subscription model fails. Times, WP, Atlantic and others couldn’t sustain it.
Also I’m left as fuck, I don’t care if quality is good or the model work to help some faceless group of shareholders. I’ll support whatever destroys anyone putting up pay walls online. Burn it all down. It’s the only way.