The New York Times Company announced on 1 November 2018 that it has surpassed 4 million subscriptions in total – from a figure of 3.8 million total subscriptions reported in August 2018. Its digital subscribers have now surpassed the 3 million mark with the net addition of 203,000 in the third quarter of 2018. However, not all of these additional digital subscribers are for news – with 60,000 subscriptions added for the company’s cooking and crossword features that are sold separately.
The gain in Q3 of 2018 is the largest increase in digital subscriptions in any quarter since the so-called Trump bump in the last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 at the peak of the last US presidential election cycle. Trump won his 4-year term in November 2016 and was inaugurated as the president in January 2017.
The company has continued to be profitable with net income at US$ 23.6 million (approximately Rs. 170 crore), which represents a drop from Q3 of 2017 when its net income included a one-time gain from the sale of a dam owned by a paper mill in which the company is an investor. However, operating profits have risen by 10% to US$ 41.63 million in Q3 of 2018 in comparison to Q3 2017. Revenue has benefitted this year with the NY Times company’s renovation and leasing out four floors of its building near Times Square.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
– Naresh Khanna
Subscribe Now 
