Things are looking up for the New York Times — one of the nation’s leading news organizations that President Trump loves to deride as the “failing New York Times.”
The New York Times Company announced it generated more than $709 million in digital revenue in 2018, suggesting that it could meet its goal of $800 million in digital sales by the end of 2020.
Twenty-seven percent more people paid for Times digital content last year compared to 2017.
More than 3.3 million people paid for digital products from the Times, including its news, crossword, and food apps, and there were 4.3 million subscriptions for the outlet’s digital and print versions.
“[Our target is] to grow our subscription business to more than 10 million subscriptions by 2025,” the Times chief executive Mark Thompson said in a statement on the company’s fourth-quarter financial results, setting a new goal for the outlet.
The strong numbers come after several other outlets recently announced a wave of cutbacks and layoffs in efforts to become profitable. BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and Vice Media were among them.
Vice Media announced it was laying off 10 percent of its staff, BuzzFeed laid off 15 percent, and the Huffington Post nixed both its health and opinion sections and all employees who worked for those parts of the site.
Gannett, which owns USA Today, also laid off at least several dozen of its employees at different newspapers across the country.
