New York Times 1

Question.1) Identify and discuss the challenges confronting the Times in the 21^st century?

Answer- New York times came into existence in 1896 and since then it is has been administered by last four generations of Ochs- Sulzberger and they all have survived it through periods of war, strikes and family crisis. Sulzberger succeeded his father as a publisher and in 1997 he became Chairman of New York Times. He also helped New York Times in retaining its position. Times faced many Challenges in the 21^st century such as:-

Ø  Distribution: - With the help of CEO, Russell T. Lewis, Sulzberger tried to reinvent the “Gray Lady” because there was a threat of decreasing circulation in future. So Times took an initiative of increasing the distribution of its newspaper in most part of the country. So, Times became the first Newspaper in United States to increase its distribution to most of the parts of country. Eventually, this step had a negative impact on Times as they had to lose 96000 subscribers within their home market .So their main focus was to regain their initial share of home market. Further, they introduced the trend of Foreign- language edition which declined afterwards due to decrease in home market.

Ø  Subscription fee: -   There was another disagreement within New York Times related to charging subscription fee. The New York Times was thinking to excel there qualities as compared to The Wall Street Journal which was the daily newspaper of New York with the largest Circulation in United States and Times after achieving quality, planned to charge the Subscription fee from the audience. The argument was that if NYT did this, then they will have to lose millions unique monthly visitors. Also, they will suffer from a massive loss of web traffic which will affect them in their long term with the decrease in consumers for Journalism and ad revenues. But the counterargument was that they can cover all these by online fee and the new print subscription by old and new customers.