
The New York Times’ App Plan Isn’t Working, So It’s Laying Off Staff - prostoalex
http://recode.net/2014/10/01/the-new-york-times-app-plan-isnt-working-so-its-laying-off-staff/
======
StefanKarpinski
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.

~~~
timsally
> 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.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> 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.

~~~
timsally
Money and time aren't always fungible, but since you consider them additive in
your argument lets assume they are for this discussion.

Starting software engineers bill out at $100 an hour. If you spend 5 hours a
week reading the news, the total cost per year in terms of your time is
$26,000. Thus the cost of the newspaper itself is 1.7% of the overall cost.
The claim that a price cut to something that only contributes 1.7% to the
total cost is going to make reading the newspaper worth it is ridiculous on
its face. The same rebuttal applies for differentiating between newspapers.

Also, there is a strong argument to be made that businesses should not be
targeting or care about people who think a 1.7% price cut makes a difference.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Money and time aren't always fungible

Things don't have to be fungible to be cumulative.

> Starting software engineers bill out at $100 an hour.

Billing rates are irrelevant because time and money are not fungible. For
example, I can read the newspaper on the train for 25 minutes each way, but it
isn't possible to productively use that time for much else because of the
constraints of the environment, so the value (i.e. opportunity cost) of using
that time is much lower than most other times.

Also, most New York Times readers are not software developers. The average
American hourly wage is less than a quarter of the one you're using.

> The claim that a price cut to something that only contributes 1.7% to the
> total cost is going to make reading the newspaper worth it is ridiculous on
> its face.

Amdahl's law explains why this is wrong. If you pay $2000/month for a
mortgage, why squabble over $40/month difference in the interest rate? Because
$40/month is $40/month. You gain more by reducing a $2040/month expense to
$2000/month (even though it's only a ~2% reduction) than by reducing a
$20/month expense to $1/month (even though it's a 95% reduction). The
percentage of the total is completely irrelevant.

~~~
timsally
> Amdahl's law explains why this is wrong.

Amdahl's law doesn't mean what you think it means; it specifically refutes
your position. To spell it out: a 100% reduction in 1.7% of the cost is
irrelevant to the total cost despite the fact that 100% is a big number.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Your argument is that you spend time value equivalent of $2167/month reading
the news, so the monetary cost of a subscription is inconsequential in
comparison. The point of Amdahl's law is that a small percentage of a large
percentage can be just as just as consequential as a large percentage of a
small percentage. So because ~$2200/month is such a significant percentage of
your total income, reducing it by 1.7% is _not_ irrelevant. $8/week is $8/week
regardless of whether it's a small percentage of a large number or a large
percentage of a small number.

------
jstalin
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
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.

------
tomdale
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/](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
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.

------
protonfish
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.)

~~~
jallmann
> 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.

~~~
prostoalex
> 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.

~~~
jallmann
Yes, with premium video, a subscription based model is a necessity.
Advertising alone is not an option.

The mechanics of video subscriptions is an interesting discussion for another
time, however it's not certain whether a completely a'la carte offering would
be sustainable for HBO -- it definitely wouldn't be for most smaller channels.
As much as people might dislike it sometimes, there are economies of scale to
bundling.

------
danso
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.

------
matkam
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
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.

~~~
ics
_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. :)

------
Theodores
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/](http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/AND-FINALLY/)

A 'zine shutting down.

------
bitroliest
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.

------
swartkrans
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.

------
subpixel
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.

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

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

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

~~~
CamperBob2
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
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-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-
the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

"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.

~~~
CamperBob2
Ctrl-f _miller_

    
    
       Term not found
    

Not much of a self-critique, then, is it?

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

~~~
stdgy
Does your home screen look different?

[http://i.imgur.com/FBBIYLR.png](http://i.imgur.com/FBBIYLR.png)

~~~
secabeen
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.

~~~
markplindsay
Also: try canceling your nytimes subscription online.

You can't—canceling requires a phone call with a lengthy wait on hold and a
customer-retention sales pitch before they'll let you off the hook.

Sometimes I think about subscribing again, but thinking about that wasted 15
minutes of my life is enough to make me forget about it.

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

