The New York Times Company

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2021

⏱️ 187 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For the entire 20th Century, you’d be hard pressed to find a better business than an American newspaper — Warren Buffett famously described them as “franchises” — and no American newspaper stood taller than the New York Times. Controlled by a single family bound by a legal oath “to maintain the editorial independence and integrity of The New York Times and to continue it as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare”, the Times served as the paper of record for generations of Americans and people around the world. But no good thing lasts forever, and the dawn of the 21st Century saw both the Times and this once-mighty industry devastated by the dual disruptive forces of the internet and the 2008 financial crisis. And yet by 2021, The Times, essentially alone of its former peers, has reemerged from the American newspaper wreckage and transformed itself into a thriving digital business with an order of magnitude more subscribers than its print heyday. Curious how it all happened? We dive into 170 years of history to find out!

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Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

The New York Times Company Playbook is available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/the-new-york-times-company

Links:

The 2014 NYT Innovation Report: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-59s-4-I2qSvG6MnA/mode/2up
Mine Safety Disclosures’ NYT presentation: https://minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/newyorktimes

Carve Outs:

Ben:

Titan by Ron Chernow: https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr-ebook/dp/B000XUDGHG
Iteratively: https://iterative.ly

David:

Sabaa Tahir’s Ember in the Ashes series: https://www.amazon.com/Ember-Ashes-3-Book/dp/B074VDZB17

Transcript

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0:00.0	Alright, high energy.
0:02.9	Yeah, need some energy to get through 170 years.
0:08.3	Woo, it's literally 170 years.
0:11.2	It's crazy.
0:22.3	Welcome to Season 8, episode two of acquired.
0:26.1	The podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks
0:29.7	behind them.
0:30.7	I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and venture
0:35.5	capital firm in Seattle.
0:37.7	And I'm David Rosenthal and I am an angel investor based in San Francisco.
0:43.4	And we are your hosts.
0:46.2	For over a hundred years, you would have been hard pressed to find a better business
0:50.1	in the world than an American newspaper.
0:53.2	Each one had a local monopoly, an incredibly profitable advertising business, and it was
0:57.8	one of the earliest examples of a reasonably low marginal cost business.
1:02.4	It's dirt cheap to just print another copy of the paper.
1:06.0	The newspaper business was, for a long time, Warren Buffett's canonical example of a franchise,
1:12.0	like the best type of business you can possibly own.
1:16.1	Indeed.
1:17.3	And this today, listeners, is the story of the paper that loomed large over all the others,
1:23.5	the New York Times.
1:25.7	Today we peer into what I think is the oldest company we've ever done on this show, founded
	...

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