NEW YORK — The publisher of The New York Times posted a 20 percent gain in fourth-quarter profits as the paper continued to add digital subscribers, although ad revenue declined both online and in print.
In 2019, the Times set a goal of 10 million subscribers by 2025, and hit the halfway mark in the latest quarter with 5.3 million print and digital subscribers. It sells access to its newspaper as well as separate subscriptions for its crosswords and recipes. In the fourth quarter, it added 342,000 new digital subscriptions. It added more than 1 million in 2019.
The company is transitioning from its roots in print to a more sustainable online model for news; many local outlets and other newspaper chains have struggled with similar efforts. News Corp. said Thursday that The Wall Street Journal also added digital subscribers in its most recent quarter, with 1.9 million average daily digital subscribers at the end of the year, up from 1.7 million in 2018.
The Times is raising the price of its digital-only news subscription to $17 a month from $15 for many customers, the first such increase since it launched in 2011. It will affect 750,000 customers by the end of the year.