NYT, WSJ report record numbers

Large papers had some nice numbers to report this month.

The New York Times Company reported more than $800 million in digital revenues in 2019.

In 2019, the company added more than one million net new total digital-only subscriptions and as of year end, it had 5,251,000 total subscriptions across its print and digital products.

Fourth-quarter digital advertising revenue decreased 10.8 percent, while print advertising revenue decreased 10.5 percent, the company said.

“2019 was a record setting year for The New York Times’s digital subscription business, the best since the company launched digital subscriptions almost nine years ago,” said Mark Thompson, president and chief executive officer of the company.

For its part, News Corp announced Feb. 7 that Dow Jones has set a new record of 3.5 million subscriptions and The Wall Street Journal crossed the 2 million digital subscriptions mark for the first time.

Dow Jones also surpassed The New York Times in revenue growth in the final quarter of calendar year 2019, according to the company. Dow Jones is publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s Group, and its Professional Information Business includes Risk & Compliance, Newswires and Factiva.

“Dow Jones revenues increased by 4% in the most recent quarter, compared to 1% for The New York Times,” said Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp. “Dow Jones is significantly more digital than The New York Times, with 62% digital revenues as we reported at fiscal year-end, including our growing Professional Information Business.”

What about The Washington Post? Hard to determine because of how it reports its numbers, says Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab. In December 2018, an memo said the Post had passed 1.5 million digital subscribers, he said.

News and Tech