It's the same old story for the New York Times: Digital subscriptions continue to rise, but not enough to offset falling revenues and earnings.
Profit fell 21% to $55.7 million or $0.07 a share, versus the average analyst estimate of $0.085 in The New York Times Company's second quarter. A 4.1% slump in overall ad revenues weighed on the results as did increased investments in "strategic initiatives," the company said.
A 32,000 jump in digital-only subscribers, fueled by new products like the NYT Now app, Times Premier and an Opinion app, brought the total number of paid digital subscribers to 831,000.
“We saw continued growth in digital advertising and circulation revenues during the quarter,” Mark Thompson, NYT Co.'s CEO, said in a statement, “but know that we still have more work to do to transform our business and deliver long-term sustainable revenue growth for the company.”
During the quarter, the company's flagship newspaper fired top editor Jill Abramson and replaced her with former managing editor Dean Baquet. A Times spokesperson said at the time that Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the Times and chairman of The New York Times Company, was spurred by a desire to change how the newsroom was managed.
The private discussion about the newspaper's future direction also became public knowledge shortly after Abramson's exit when its innovation report leaked. The 96-page report compared The Times to digital-only publications like BuzzFeed and Business Insider and recommended, among other things, that the paper put less emphasis on its physical front page.