At Home @ NYT
In this Sunday’s print edition of The New York Times there was a new stand-alone section, At Home.
And two other sections (Sports, Travel) disappeared or got folded into other parts of the paper.
This change seems intuitive given what’s happening with COVID.
But still it caught my interest because the newspaper industry is not known for making quick pivots in response to external conditions.
So let’s look at it for a moment.
There are a few reasons for this - there’s little to cover in Sports and Travel right now, which results in little reader attention to these topics, which contributes to reduced advertising spending in these categories.
I say “contributes” because its not as if airlines would be promoting their schedules right now anyway, even if there WERE a lot of reader attention.
On the other hand there is a lot of interest in adapting intelligently to a shelter-in-place lifestyle, and whatever comes after that.
So …
“Welcome to At Home, a new print section of The New York Times. These pages are devoted to the belief that we can enrich our lives even while staying home and maintaining our proper social distance from one other during the coronavirus pandemic.”
A sampling of articles that caught my interest:
Sink A Battleship, Buy A Railroad (playing old-school board games with friends via Zoom)
Make It Through Math (how math-hating parents can help their children with math homework)
Why Not Get Into Yoga (illustrated poses for workout-from-home yoga enthusiasts)
Five Dishes To Cook This Week (easy to prepare, healthy dinner ideas to make at home)
Watch This: The BBC on YouTube (if you are going to go down a rabbit hole, make it elevating)
How To Give Yourself a Buzz Cut (avoiding lumpy-ness, in haircuts and relationships)
Make Your Own Illustrated Map (a hand-drawn map is a hand-drawn set of memories)
Solve These Crosswords (and other games and puzzles, on paper)
A few facts about the new section as a business decision ...
The Sunday edition is NYT's flagship print product. NYT earns ~$1B in revenue from subscriptions each year, about 60% from print and 40% digital-only. Subscriptions have ticked-up since Coronavirus hit, and product relevance is essential to renewals.
Ad spending is down across nearly all categories. Travel and Sports were hit hard as flight and event schedules have been cut back. But some few categories are up, like the ones covered in At Home. NYT earns ~$500M in advertising revenue each year, and having the right endemic content for growth-advertisers helps.
Although At Home appears positioned as a newspaper section, it is also available digitally for those who can’t or choose not to read a paper copy.
You can read more about the new product here ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/reader-center/at-home-section-coronavirus.html
And see the digital version here ...
