NY Times rolling out subscriber-only newsletters

The New York Times indicated on Thursday that it has plans to roll out several new subscription-only newsletters and make a handful of existing newsletters available only to paying subscribers this fall. 

The Times, which currently produces about 50 newsletters, will create seven new offerings for subscribers and make 11 more exclusive content.  

Among the current newsletters slated to go behind the paywall are On Politics, Well, On Tech With Shira Ovide and Parenting, among other author-specific newsletters from the Times’s Opinion writers. 

“We have to make sure that we’re adding much more distinctive value to what it means to feel like you are a subscriber,” Alex Hardiman, the Times’s chief product officer, told the newspaper. “So a lot of the work now is about making sure that every single time you experience The Times as a subscriber, you know it and you feel it.”

Other top newsletters the company currently produces, including The Morning and DealBook, will remain free to all readers, the Times said. 

The new offerings will include subscriber-based content written by top journalists at the newspaper like Peter Coy, a former Bloomberg Businessweek journalist, and Kara Swisher, a tech writer who also hosts a popular podcast for the newspaper’s Opinion section. 

The changes are slated to begin in September. 

The Times, like many national news brands, has poured significant resources into its newsletters this year as the audience for subscription-based journalism created by big-name brands has grown. Substack has emerged as a leading platform for journalists to build online followings for their reporting, and several social media companies have in recent months announced plans to offer newsletter subscriptions to users.