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07/21/2017
Poynter’s Edmonds: Digital may be the future but print still looms large
Another installment in the tale of newspaper earnings woes kicks off this week. In reports on the second quarter, expect to hear CEOs tout how the growth of digital audience and digital subscriptions is a bright spot.
But I have been harvesting some statistics suggesting that print circulation revenues are far from a side issue for these transforming companies.
Take as Exhibit A The New York Times Co., where digital-only subscriptions now outnumber print by more than two to one, and net additions per quarter, thanks in part to the Trump bump, have been growing by six-figure increments in recent quarters.
So how much of the company's audience revenue now comes from those digital subs? Thirty one percent of a total of $242 million according to the Times's first quarter report. In other words, nearly 70 percent of circulation revenue is still print.
In an e-mail interview, chief financial officer James Follo agreed with my math but not with my definitions. The 1 million or so print subscriptions, he wrote, are "all access... whereby subscribers get access to both print and digital products. The majority of those customers use both products, so a portion of that revenue is digital as well."
There are a pair of interesting strategic implications in what remains of the print-digital revenue split at the Times. A full-rate digital-only subscription is $195 a year. Print subs range in price but go as high as more than $1,000 annually. (The Times does not disclose the mix of introductory and full-price subs in either category).
