Think Tank

Svea: You've been with the company for the last 25 years, so what was the most important moment for you when you took over the opportunity to expand and build the brand?

 

Stephen: A general highlight is the growth of  our digital subscriptions outside the United States from 50,000 when we started to over 2 million now. I'm one of those people that bridge our transition from an analog print media to the digital first organization we are now. It has been a tough transition but we are on the right track.

 

Along the way there have been a number of highlights but I guess if I had to pick one it would be the conception and implementation of  The New York Times Climate Hub  - a 9 day conference of live journalism during COP 26 in Glasgow. It was ambitious, entrepreneurial and very effective at re-enforcing the depth, breadth and ambition of our climate journalism. 

 

So many memories and epic moments. Let's talk about digitalization of the publishing industry and in general the whole media industry. How did you observe the whole kind of digitalization and what surprised you the most?

 

To give context, the mission of those of us that work on the business side at the Times is essentially to find business model(s) that sustain our newsroom and the high quality, rigorous, independent journalism that it produces.The advent of the financial crisis coupled with the rise of social media platforms that disrupted the entire media ecosystem and the lifeblood that essentially funded journalism made us realize that unless we altered our business model significantly we would struggle to sustain a newsroom of 1,200 or so souls as it was back then. We had to become a digital and mobile first news organization with a subscription led business model. 

 

Change is a noun that people tend to like but the vowel - not so much and we essentially had to change everything. Everything that is except our full throated commitment to producing the highest quality independent journalism.Good journalism is good business - they are mutually re-enforcing. So as we committed to changing our approach to everything else we doubled down on our commitment to investing in our journalism. Today our newsroom is double the size it was when we launched our subscription pay model.

 

I guess the thing that surprised me the most during this time was the relentless pace of change wrought by technology and that in fact we needed to be in a constant state of beta. That takes some getting used to and requires big cultural shifts.​​

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How was the evolution and development between the US with New York, capital of the world and other countries in Europe? How did they pick up? 

 

In 2015, we set a big, hairy, audacious goal to get to 10 million subscribers by 2025. Our ambition for growth outside of the US was that 20% of our subscribers would be from international markets. Initially we focused on the English speaking markets  - the largest, lowest hanging fruit on the tree so to speak.That is going well - we now have over 2 million subscribers outside the US  - but we still have much more room for growth. The Times has always had a strong commitment to international coverage, it is part of the DNA of the place but we have significantly strengthened our international reporting staff and increased the number of bureaus around the world and we have very sophisticated news hubs in Seoul and Asia. This has undoubtedly helped drive our international growth.​​​​​​​​​​

 

​​​​​​​​​We know each other from COP28, and always when we meet, we are also talking about climate, sustainability. What do you think, from your perspective, and from a journalist's standpoint, what does it need to improve to produce top-level journalism about climate change and global net zero? 

 

The Times dedicates a great deal of news resources to covering the climate story. We have a dedicated climate desk but every desk covers climate. It is a business story, a tech story, a health and culture story as well as a meteorological and science story. We engage not just great reporters to cover it but also our graphics and visual journalism teams. Consequently, we published more stories on climate than any other US news organization last year by a significant margin. 

 

I think that all media covering climate have a challenge of how we mix the urgency - the type of stories that, rightly, make the home page or the front page with stories on solutions. To that end we at the Times have just launched a new regular feature as part of our Climate Forward newsletter called the Climate Fix that focuses entirely on solutions.

 

I think we need more relatable human stories to make climate journalism cut through. When I say “we” I mean all media covering the subject.​​​​

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 "How can we use every tool to improve getting to the truth and explaining it to people? How do you balance informing the audience about climate change and global net zero, while also managing KPIs like increasing subscribers and revenue?"

 

As I have said  - good journalism is good business. Everything flows from there. If we produce great journalism, our digital platforms allow us to monetize it in a variety of ways. Just as our subscription first model has reduced our reliance on advertising, paradoxically it has made us more attractive to advertisers as they see we have a highly engaged, curious paying audience that can be targeted very effectively by marketers. So we will continue to invest in journalism and in the technology that allows us to deliver it to our global audiences. 

 

Let's talk about AI and sustainability. It was the first keynote in this summit here in New York, 2024. Why is this topic so important?

 

AI and climate is a big subject. On two levels the first level is that people are hoping that AI will help accelerate and scale climate solutions across a whole range of areas across energy, transport, building materials, agriculture etc. But on the second level there is also concern about the enormous amount of energy that AI consumes and the commensurate emissions from generating that energy. So our AI session was really designed to examine these issues. It is one of the central topics being discussed all over New York during climate week. 

So talking a bit more about geopolitical perspective, How do you think will the EU and the US work together in the future in terms of EU AI act? We talked about AI and what kind of changes it's regarding and what kind of perspective regarding climate and what do you think in terms of geopolitical wise? 

 

I'm not a journalist, I'm a business guy so what I'm going to say now is my own opinion. I don’t know if I would characterize it as the US and EU working together but I do think that the EU will continue to be the first mover in terms of digital regulation and that goes for AI regulation too. The US, I suspect, will look closely at EU regulation and perhaps adapt and adopt the pieces that it feels are relevant to the US market.

 

Thank you Stephen, it was a pleasure speaking with you! 

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Photo credits: Lucas Flores Piran​​​​