> 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/).