In 1996 the New York Times went online… and that was eighteen years ago! The website has reached New York State’s age of majority.
It was already clear by the mid-90′s that the then treacle-slow World Wide Web would become the platform of choice for all sorts of content – including news and comment – once it became fast and affordable for ordinary people. If anything the surprise is that in 2014 print still takes such a large share.
Sadly the NYT couldn’t eke out enough revenue from online display advertising to cover the decline in print, and it is a much smaller business today. Marketers have more powerful tools at their disposal and readers have access to seas of content – much of it very good. I hope, though, that the newly mature NYT gets to enjoy its adulthood for a few more years, and that its DNA survives in new forms even as the old platforms become frail and pass away.
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