Paul Gillin and I are back with this episode after the recent events of the massive layoffs at the Washington Post and the LA Times, the shuttering of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette  and funding cuts at NPR. We describe the continuing train wreck of daily news there and contrast the Post’s approach with what has been going on at the New York Times digital property. The Times diversified its revenue stream beyond its core newsgathering with purchasing gaming, cooking, and sports-related content. Post’s owner Jeff Bezos didn’t diversify or even keep the news core. Part of the digital newspaper problem is that its ad revenue model is gone, as search traffic has dried up thanks to AI chatbots. Compounding this is that overall monthly visits to the Post’s website is down from 60M (in 2022) to 40M visits last year, and subscriptions are dropping too. We contrast the Post and the Times business models.

On our latest 17 min. podcast, we talk about some signs of success with subscriptions for smaller, more targeted sites, such as 404Media, which shows that a small group of independent journalists can keep quality high and report on significant stories. Also, individual creators (such as Mr. Beast and Mark Rober) can build a brand and attract significant audiences (Rober has more than 70M subscribers, for example) on YouTube and TikTok.

If you want to also listen to Marty Baron, former editorial director of the Post, here he is talking to Tim Miller about his thoughts on the decline of his former employer.