alt Hacker NewsI'd been a relatively long-time subscriber (since 2016) and preferred the Post to the Times for political and international news; more focused, a little drier, easier to follow. I canceled my subscription early last year, not because of anything Bezos did, but because the Times had improved to the point where I just wasn't reading the Post very often.
In understanding everything that's being written about the Post layoffs, one thing you absolutely have to understand (you can weight it however you'd like) to have a coherent take is: the New York Times is an anomaly. Newspapers are a terrible business. People don't get news from newspapers anymore, and advertisers don't reach customers through them.
The Times is thriving because they've pivoted from being a newspaper to being a media business. The games vertical is the first thing people talk about, but cooking is arguably a better example. The verticals have dedicated users, their own go-to-markets, their own user retention loops.
Like basically every other newspaper, the Post failed to replicate this. They're staffed like a big media business, not like a targeted vertical like Politico, but they don't successfully operate like a media business.
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> The Times is thriving because they've pivoted from being a newspaper to being a media business. The games vertical is the first thing people talk about, but cooking is arguably a better example. The verticals have dedicated users, their own go-to-markets, their own user retention loops.
NYT is taking a smart approach to other verticals, such as The Athletic and some of their podcasts (for tech, Hard Fork). I am hoping they can figure out business coverage eventually.
What surprises me is how almost no other "hard news" brand in the English-speaking world has attempted to follow even a lite version of the NYT approach. It's not like Bezos or the other billionaire owners of legacy media (Murdoch, Soon-Shiong, Henry, etc) didn't have the chops or the deep pockets to invest in a recipe database or a simple gaming portal. Even AARP figured out that simple games are a good way to engage with its users (https://www.aarp.org/games/).
After subscribing for a decade I canceled NYT last yr because I felt it was leaning more into social media bait (which I dont blame them for business reasons). That plus they kept blocking Firefox with an unpassable captcha even though I was logged in.
I now read WSJ largely for the same reasons "more focused, a little drier, easier to follow". I also find WSJ is much better at writing good headlines that draw you in, on a broad range of topics not just breaking Trump news 24/7 which is mostly what NTYimes notifies you with. WSJ also has an excellent Youtube channel, probably the best of the big 3. The only problem with WSJ is it costs twice as much.
NYT is good for games and cooking. Their news editors are garbage.