Re:New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data
by windthrown on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @11:14AM
(#23235739)
It still costs a lot of money to send reporters all over the world and do lengthy investigative journalism, regardless of if it is delivered to you in print or digital format. And NYT does charge more for physical paper delivery than they do for online-only subscriptions.
Re:New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data
by bb611 on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @01:46PM
(#23237814)
Home delivery NY Times is more than 2x the cost of digital (dependent on location), you're already getting the "no paper" discount by buying digital.
Re:New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data
by Wowfunhappy on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @11:23AM
(#23235835)
> So while I do agree newspapers have always been ads with some news thrown in there to get people to look at the paper, there were some much higher costs there in the paper part of the newspaper
Distribution costs went down, but so did ad revenue.
It used to be that a subscription primarily paid for the cost of printing/distribution, and the real profit came from advertising. Unfortunately, print ads use to pay significantly more than web ads do today. So while the distribution costs are lower, most newspapers now need both revenue sources.
Re:New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data
by untog on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @11:12AM
(#23235697)
> There was a real cost to printing single newspaper to me.
There is also a higher cost to the subscriber to receive a newspaper compared to digital delivery, IIRC. So it is still proportional.
So while I do agree newspapers have always been ads with some news thrown in there to get people to look at the paper, there were some much higher costs there in the paper part of the newspaper (and printers and delivery people and so on). In theory the cost of how I read "the paper" now should be much lower, so if I pay to subscribe to the website maybe there shouldn't be ANY ads? Or far fewer?
I guess my thinking is nytimes.com isn't the same thing as The NY Times I get delivered to my house, so maybe things like ads should be treated in a different way? Sure the people that make it and reporters and news and all that are the same, but how I consume the actual thing is significantly different and has a different cost model.
Plus those print ads were/are WAY different in so many ways.