The Internet has been coming on for ten years now, but these dinosaurs have ignored its democratic power and now they can't react.
Here's the money quote for me:
The Times, in newsprint form, with its daily 1.1 million circulation, and Sunday 1.7 million, makes between $1.5 and $1.7 billion a year (the company does not break out the exact figure). Times.com, with its 40 million unique online users a month, likely makes less than $200 million a year. Cruelly, an online user is worth much lessbecause his or her value can be so easily measuredthan a traditional reader.
Translation: we've overcharged our print advertisers for years because we had the only available ad vehicle, and were at our mercy; now, they know what ads work and who clicks on them, so they refuse to pay more. We've throttled the goose that laid the golden egg.
The Times does have an excellent website, however. I don't know why they can't go completely digital. New Yorkers got laptops and cellphones now to get stock quotes and the news.