The Art of The Deal: New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien speaks during the New York Times annual DealBook summit on November 29, 2023 (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
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In tonight’s edition, The New York Times set themselves an ambitious goal of reaching 15 million subscribers by 2027. On Wednesday, they had some good news on that front, announcing 460,000 new subscribers – the biggest quarterly gain since it started disclosing that metric a few years ago. But Breaker has done some digging, and not all is as it seems from The Gray Lady, owing to some cunning and crafty number crunching.
Also, two of the faces of Mark Halperin’s 2WAY dramatically quit the show, New York Post EIC Keith Poole’s Mamdani victory lap, and more staff cuts at The Daily Mail.
Also, on The Breaker pod this week, we are joined by Sources’ Alex Heath to talk about the AI bubble, the convergence between the tech and media industries, and what it’s like to interview Mark Zuckerberg.
It’s Thursday, which means Journo Jobs is back. Tonight, we have gigs at Politico, USA Today, Bloomberg, The New York Times, WaPo, and NBC.
Finally, some shameless self-promotion. We joined The Ankler Agenda podcast to chinwag about MS NOW, CBS News, FOX, CNN, Bari Weiss (and her beefy bodyguards), as well as the future of TV News. You can listen here.
Mentioned tonight: David Ellison, Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Almar Latour, Suzy Weiss, Jake Lahut, Sean Spicer, Dan Turrentine, Mark Halperin, Lord Rothermere, Mitchell Jackson, Armie Hammer, Max Tani, Solana Pyne, Jordan Vita, Damon Beres, Dominic Ponsford, Aidan McLaughlin, Jeremy Barr, Michael Grymbaum, Alex Sherman, Natalie Jarvey, Tatiana Siegel, Brent Lang, Matt Donnelly and more.
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All the Subs That's Fit to Count
(Exclusive.) It was an ambitious goal announced by the New York Times with much fanfare. 15 million subscribers by 2027. In 2022, the Times’ CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, made the proclamation at the company's investor day at the New York Times building.
The paper of record has been going gangbusters ever since it embraced its paywall, as evidenced by the opening line of every quarterly earnings release over the past two years: "The Company added approximately X net digital-only subscribers…"
And on Wednesday, it was trebles all round as it seemed like The Gray Lady was getting closer to their goal, reporting it added 460,000 new subscribers on their earnings call, the biggest quarterly gain since it started disclosing that metric a few years ago.
It's a very large number when you consider the Times had only averaged 248,000 new subs per quarter going all the way back to the start of 2022.
So how did it manage to increase subscribers by more than 46 percent in just one earnings period?
Turns out the devil is in the details, and The Times have managed to juice their numbers by…
In Plain Sight
(Exclusive.) Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine quit Mark Halperin's 2WAY Thursday in mysterious circumstances…Around 20 people were laid off Thursday from The Daily Mail in…
Alex Heath on Newsroom AI Adoption, The “new Murdochs” and Interviewing Mark Zuckerberg
Tech journalist Alex Heath, who just months ago struck out on his own and started a newsletter, Sources, and co-hosts the ACCESS podcast, is this week's guest on The Breaker Pod.
From Super Burrito in Greenwich Village (cheers to the owners, Eugene, Max, and Griffin, for having us down), we talked about the convergence of tech and media companies, with David Ellison acquiring Paramount, and with his dad, Larry’s, firm eye on a TikTok takeover.
“The Ellison thing is really interesting. Larry Ellison, his dad, and David, like they are about to maybe become the new Murdochs, so to speak.” Heath told us. "You could have Bari (Weiss) running CNN and the TikTok algorithm theoretically at some point.”
On a larger scale, Heath told us that some media organizations have been desperate to implement AI, rushing to do so and often with catastrophic results.
“You've got a bunch of clueless like media execs and legacy newsrooms that are like, let's just plug this in and fix our problems. Right? They're not really thinking through it, and then they let it write a story, and it gets it all wrong, and it's like, that's not how you should do it.”
Catch more in this week's episode of The Breaker Pod. Make sure you check us out and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods.