Is The New York Times a games company? A familiar debate continues
“The New York Times is no longer a news company,” proclaims the caption of a chart posted on X Saturday summarizing how Times bundle subscribers have eclipsed news-only subscribers.
The New York Times is no longer a news company.$NYT pic.twitter.com/kLKfIkow8b
— Fiscal.ai (@fiscal_ai) February 21, 2026
The trends illustrated by the chart will not come as a surprise to close readers of Nieman Lab, but it still prompted a lively conversation on X over the weekend among some media observers.
“This chart shows a news company that built an attention ecosystem where Wordle gets you in the door, Cooking keeps you at breakfast, The Athletic owns your commute, and by the time you think about canceling, you’d lose four products instead of one,” wrote Aakash Gupta, the author of a product management newsletter, in one post that generated debate over how central news remains to the business of the Times.
Overrated story. The newspaper business was always a bundle! In 1960 and 1980 and even 2000, most Americans bought a newspaper for the sports page, the movie times, crosswords, maybe a weather report. That stuff underwrote news reporting. https://t.co/ft91IxV5BR
— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) February 22, 2026
I don’t think this is the correct read of the chart, the NYT literally stopped offering a News-only subscription for new customers — the News product is the tentpole feature of all the bundles. https://t.co/SQM4QG4QFp
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 22, 2026
I would say this misses the mission part of why the @nytimes leadership did this. They see news as a sacred trust and a responsibility. I’m so grateful that all these other amazing parts of the @nyt allow us to do our jobs. https://t.co/QxhNcTOutY
— Lulu NYT (@LuluGNavarro) February 22, 2026
this is a fine breakdown, tho my one criticism would be that this is basically what newspapers always have been during the print era
i started reading the “funny pages” and doing crosswords when i was a kid and reading hard news came later on
just adapting to the digital era https://t.co/rtJiyHIOfZ
— rat king
(@MikeIsaac) February 22, 2026
the other way to look at this is the times was pretty good at making money in news, got better at offering a bunch of adjacent digital products, and can now charge users more for all of them together https://t.co/IuKKQshNnV
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) February 22, 2026
The Washington Post’s decline was the flip side of this success. Zero major acquisitions during the Bezos era. Some successful in-house developments (Arc CMS), but people want more than just a great news feed. Kay Graham said newspapers are like a supermarket. Post forgot that. https://t.co/kUyBl6Pqxw
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) February 22, 2026
The NYT figured out a long time ago that their competition is not other news outlets but “anyone who puts anything on the Internet.” https://t.co/45AukQD9AN
— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) February 22, 2026
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.
Related Knowledge Center: The Times and its critics
The New York Times is the most important — and successful — news organization in the United States, with unmatched resources. But its political coverage has its critics, including a growing number of veteran journalists.