The 'Failing New York Times' Crushed Earnings; Stock Hits 10 Year Highs Thanks to Trump

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Since election night, the stock price of the "failing Ny Times" is up a little more than 75%. Their online subscriptions have been soaring and business is booming -- all thanks to President Trump.

Palace intrigue is the culprit. For those of you that still believe the MSM is dying, I am here to tell you otherwise. The final redpill is knowing that Trump was elected to bailout the main stream media and convert democrats into deep state loving war mongers.

The NYT reported earning this morning, beating estimates -- helped by a 63% jump in online subscriptions.

Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $0.18 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.04 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.14; revenues rose 9.3% year/year to $407.1 mln vs the $393.07 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
 
Paid digital-only subscriptions totaled approximately 2,333,000 at the end of the second quarter of 2017, a net increase of 114,000 subscriptions compared to the end of the first quarter of 2017 and a 63.4 percent increase compared to the end of the second quarter of 2016.
 
Second-quarter print advertising revenue decreased 10.5 percent, while digital advertising revenue increased 22.5 percent. Digital advertising revenue was $55.2 million, or 41.7 percent of total Company advertising revenues, compared with $45.0 million, or 34.3 percent, in the second quarter of 2016.
 
Guidance: Total subscription revenues in the third quarter of 2017 are expected to increase at a rate similar to that of the second quarter of 2017. Total advertising revenues in the third quarter of 2017 are expected to decrease in the mid- to high-single digits compared with the third quarter of 2016. Operating costs and adjusted operating costs are expected to increase in the mid-single digits in the third quarter of 2017 compared with the third quarter of 2016.

 

This tweet likely added 10,000 subscriptions
 
By what I can see, the company is doing quite well and not "failing" at all. As a matter of fact, their online business is thriving and quickly displacing traditional print.

It"s also worth noting, the stock price hasn"t been this high since 2007.

You cannot buy advertising like this
 
According to the Trump Twitter archive, Trump has tweeted about the NY Times at least 121 times.

Rebellion At The NYTimes: Newsroom To Walk Out After "Decrying Direction Of Paper"

Exhausted and demoralized after repeated buyouts and cutbacks in the newsroom, it seems the downtrodden journalists at the New York Times have finally had enough: In a pair of letters delivered to executive editor Dean Baquet and managing editor Joseph Kahn, the News Guild of New York said the New York Times editorial staff will leave the newsroom on Thursday as a demonstration of solidarity as management threatens jobs, according to MarketWatch.

Unlike the employee rebellion at the Wall Street Journal last year, when staffers confronted management about unequal pay practices and a paucity of female reporters and editors in leadership roles, the uproar at the times is centered around the repeated paycuts and cutbacks, which have left the newsroom feeling “demoralized.” One letter was sent by the organization"s copy editors, who are facing dramatic staffing cuts, while the second letter was sent by reporters in an expression of solidarity with the editing staff. Both detailed frustrations with the repeated rounds of buyouts, and the lack of transparency surrounding management’s decisionmaking.

“In the copy editors’ letter to Baquet and Kahn, they say they feel betrayed and disrespected in the newsroom, and ask that management reconsider staffing cuts that are expected as the paper plans to restructure.

“Cutting us down to 50 to 55 editors from more than 100, and expecting the same level of quality in the report, is dumbfoundingly unrealistic,” the letter reads. “You often speak about the importance of engaging readers, of valuing, investing and giving a voice to readers. Dean and Joe: We are your readers, and you have turned your backs on us.”

“Editors — and yes, that especially means copy editors — save reporters and the Times every day from countless errors, large and small,” they say in the letter. “Requiring them to dance for their supper sends a clear message to them, and to us, that the respect we have shown the Times will not be reciprocated.”

The editorial staff is accusing Times management of being too opaque in its efforts to restructure the news operation, which includes consolidating two separate groups of editors into one group and asking copy editors to resubmit applications for roles in the newsroom.

Indeed, morale is so low at the NYT that its reporters and editors said they actually feel more respected by readers than by management. The letters referenced an internal report in which the copy editors were compared to dogs urinating on fire hydrants.

That’s quite the claim  - considering President Donald Trump’s relentless bashing of the “failing” news organization has turned public sentiment squarely against it.

“And that is why it feels like such a profound waste that morale is low throughout the newsroom, and that many of us, from editors to reporters to photo editors to support staff, are angry, embittered and scared of losing our jobs,” the letter reads.

The rebellion comes at a time when advertising revenues for print – formerly a powerhouse of the media industry that has been precipitously eroded by the rise of free news on the internet – continue to shrink, and gains in digital advertising are failing to make up the difference.

In the first quarter, print ads declined by 18% while digital ad revenue increased by nearly 19% and accounted for more than 38% of the company’s total ad revenue. Still, the paper’s stock remains buoyant; shares have risen more than 35% year-to-date, compared with a 9% gain in the S&P 500.

NYT's Nick Kristof Urges IRS Employees To Illegally Leak Trump's Tax Return

On Sunday evening, the New York Times" columnist Nicholas Kristoff urged IRS employees Sunday to break the law, and leak Donald Trump’s tax returns to his publication: “If you’re in IRS and have a certain president’s tax return that you’d like to leak, my address is: NYT, 620 Eighth Ave, NY NY 10018,” Nicholas Kristof wrote on Twitter.

But if you"re in IRS and have a certain president"s tax return that you"d like to leak, my address is: NYT, 620 Eighth Ave, NY NY 10018. https://t.co/ujYe100Tn9

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) March 6, 2017

As the Hill reminds us, the release of an individual"s unauthorized tax returns is a felony. While reporters who publish illegally obtained information that they did not solicit are traditionally not prosecuted - recall that in September 2016 the NYT released an old Trump tax return without legal consequences-  the legal picture becomes less clear if the reporters are involved in the leaking of the information.

On this issue, the U.S. code on unauthorized disclosure of information states quite clearly that "It shall be unlawful for any person to whom any return or return information (as defined in section 6103(b)) is disclosed in a manner unauthorized by this title thereafter willfully to print or publish in any manner not provided by law any such return or return information... Any violation of this paragraph shall be a felony punishable by a fine in any amount not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution."

A veteran NYT reporter, the Harvard-educated Kristof has covered global affairs for the NYT since 2001. Last September before the election, the Times was sent Trump"s 1995 tax documents anonymously. After verification, the paper printed the documents in full a few days later. 

Shortly thereafter, Trump’s attorney sent a letter to the paper"s editors stating that publishing the tax documents was “illegal” because "Mr. Trump has not authorized the disclosure of any of his tax returns.” 

New York Times editor Dean Baquet had stated publicly earlier in September that he was willing to risk going to jail to publish Trump"s tax returns. Should some IRS "source" respond to Kristof and illegally share Trump"s tax documents, Baquet may get his request.

New York Times Warns "Budget Cuts Are Coming", Will Invest $5 Million To Cover Trump

On Tuesday, the New York Times unveiled its "2020 report", a self-assessment by the newspaper of its ongoing operational progress, accompanied by a note by top editors Dean Baquet and Joe Kahn, which also presents the company"s outlook on the future. Unlike previous years, when The NYT was worried that it was falling behind its digital competition like other liberal websites including Vox, WaPo, and BuzzFeed, this time the evaluation was more chipper, suggesting the NYT feels relatively good about its prospects.

Based on the report, the NYT"s stated goal to double its digital revenue to $800 million by 2020 seems within reach, after $500 million in 2016, and an trend line shows that revenue from consumers has far outstripped ad dollars. Additionally, the Times now counts more than 1.5 million paying digital subscribers and more than 1m print subscribers.

“We are, in the simplest terms, a subscription-first business. We are not trying to maximize clicks and sell low-margin advertising against them. We are not trying to win a pageviews arms race,” the 2020 report said. “Our focus on subscribers stems from a challenge confronting us: the weakness in the markets for print advertising and traditional forms of digital-display advertising.”

And yet not all was good news, because in the report was a warning that budget cuts are coming, a notice which followed the newspaper"s announcement several weeks ago that it would rent out floors in its headquarters to other companies to beef up its cash flow. To wit:

Some of these initiatives stem directly from consultations with the 2020 group; others result from the realities of the media business in a period of rapid change. Nothing can disguise the fact that the continued shift from print to digital demands a somewhat smaller and more focused newsroom.

There will be budget cuts this year. We will lay out the specifics in the coming weeks and months. We cannot pretend to be immune from financial pressures but we view this moment as a necessary repositioning of The Times’s newsroom, not as a diminishment.

The jobs impacted will be mostly in the editing vertical:

We must move away from duplicative and often low-value line editing. It slows us down, costs too much, and discourages experiments in storytelling. Backfielders, department heads, News Desk editors and, yes, the masthead spend too much time line editing and copy editing, moving around words with little true impact on a story. Copy editors, meanwhile, spend too much time editing and re-editing stories that should be posted quickly.

Yet in an ironic twist, it appears that Trump will lead to even more investing in the US, because the NYT announced it would invest some $5 million to cover Trump.

We are deeply committed to protecting our investment in the original newsgathering and storytelling that make The Times so indispensable in our readers’ lives. Our journalists reported from the ground in more than 150 countries last year, often at great personal risk. Our commitment to expert journalism will not waver. Instead we will focus cuts on the multilayered editing and production systems, a legacy of our newspaper traditions that remains much bigger and more complex than at our competitors.

To that end, you should know the company is investing more than ever in accountability journalism. As we explain later in this document, the business side will provide us an additional $5 million so we can produce even more coverage of the incoming Trump administration.

It adds that "even in these difficult financial times for our industry, the entire company has a commitment to this story. It is not only our mission. It is vital to our business. Our dominance on this story of a changing America will ensure our position as the essential news organization for years to come." It is unclear what would happen to this investment if Trump were to call out the NYT out as the next source of "fake news."

The biggest change coming to the NYT however, is that it is becoming more visual.

..The majority of our report is fairly traditional, and we should broaden the ways we tell stories. The broader mobile landscape is increasingly a visual one — think of Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube — and we know that our mobile audience wants Times journalism to incorporate visuals even more fully into our work. This will make our report better, but it will require significant focus.

The goal: to gain even more subscribers. "by focusing on subscribers, The Times will also maintain a stronger advertising business than many other publications. Advertisers crave engagement: readers who linger on content and who return repeatedly. Thanks to the strength and innovation of our journalism — not just major investigative work and dispatches from around the world but also interactive graphics, virtual reality and Emmy-winning videos that redefine storytelling — The Times attracts an audience that advertisers want to reach."

And now, after all that good news, if only the "2020 Report" also had an explanation why the company is vacating 8 floors in its HQ to generate "significant rental revenue."