YouSaid · the spoken record

Meredith Kopit Levien

lines on the record: 71
first: 2023-03-23
most recent: 2023-03-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Making sure that the whole world understands why the New York Times should be an essential habit in millions and millions more people's lives.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The growth path may not be linear, but over the long arc of what unfolds from here, we believe the demand for quality news is only going to get bigger. And we believe the demand for the other things we do gains recipes, shopping advice, really high quality sports journalism is, you know, we are building leading products and that's only going to help us get more people to pay attention to news when the time is right for them.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go back to what I said earlier. We're playing a really long game. I'm not talking about the next quarter or even like the immediate period we're in. One of the ways, one of the reasons I love being at the New York Times and I love this job is because we are playing a really, really long game. And what I'm trying to say is I think the demand for high quality independent journalism, ours, the posts, the journals, everyone who's good at it. There are many your organization. There are many organizations who are very, very good at it. In the long arc of history that will unfold from here, there will only be more, not less need for that. That's the broader point I'm trying to make to you. You know, our own growth path may not be linear. We've said that a number of times we're deeply confident in our trajectory to 15 million subscribers, but to your point, there's plenty going on in the ecosystem. And, you know, we are quick to assert.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the world is only getting more educated people with more access to the internet, with more desire for high quality information. I think the need for what the New York Times does. I've told you in multiple different ways to your point, that the main idea of the place remains the highest quality journalism as broadly provided as we possibly can across kind of an ever-widening array of topics and formats. I think the demand for that is only growing. I think that the world is only going to need to understand itself for all its complexity.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, sure, but like it's a different business model, has different pressures. They're not those newsrooms are not protected by this corporate structure that we start out talking about. Then you have a gaming business, which has wildly different trade-offs embedded in it, wildly different customer acquisition stories embedded in it, wildly different competitors, right? There's a reasonable world in which I ask the CEO of the New York Times what she thinks about the Microsoft Activision merger because she's a competitor in gaming. And maybe if you ask nicely enough, Microsoft will let you run Call of Duty in the New York Times app because they're letting everybody do it.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have the privilege of being CEO of a journalism company, and I am, you know, we are a tech-enabled journalism company and we need extraordinary, we have extraordinary digital product development and engineering and data. Talent, and that is how we get more people to engage with the work, the quality of the coverage and the other kinds of content we make in combination with the software that helps people find and experience it at scale. But make no mistake, we're journalism companies.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the country doesn't trust you. I don't mean every day. I don't mean, yeah, but I just, you know, who used that COVID case tracker? That was a value no matter, you know, that was a value to everyone. And so we believe that for every curious person, there is an opportunity for the New York Times to be valuable and relevant. And part of the essential subscription strategy is about just being more relevant, meaning more to more people. Being more relevant in more ways to a wider audience.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our news report, you know, we are mission first. Our job is to seek the truth and help people understand the world in the report, and we're never coming off that. And the better we do that, we believe, the larger the audience we will find. And I'll just tell you, at the peak of COVID, so in like, you know, April or May of 2020, one in two adult Americans was coming to the New York Times. So I would just push back on the notion that we are one and two is 50% for a particular.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just under 10 million subscribers, we've put out a next milestone aiming for, which is 15 million. We certainly don't want that to be or believe it to be the end point. And we acquired our way into sports. Time has always covered sports, but in a much more kind of day-to-day way for the passionate fans with an idea of bringing in a much larger audience. Let me say a couple more things about how we think about it. You asked me about decision making before.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would sort of frame the idea differently. We want the New York Times as a whole, which is everything we do, news, the athletic, all of it. We want to be for everyone who's curious. And you've made assertions about politics, what I'll say to you is the most sacrosanct value at the New York Times is the independence of the work. And that is true for a news journalism. And that is true for the journalism we do about sports and everything else. I just described that to you on product reviews. So independence is the most sacrosanct value in the place. Are we trying to widen the audience? Absolutely. I'm telling you, you know, we have.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Work that goes into ensuring they stay independent. And the athletics journalists operate thoroughly independently of our commercial interest. So I would say that's a through line to all of it.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing that is a through line to all of it, and particularly the times athletic and wire cutter, games and cooking, this will apply from a quality standpoint, but authority, trust, trustworthiness, independence, just the excellence and the quality of the work, it's all got to be that. And what I would say, you know, yes, wirecutter is different business model. We're giving people shopping advice and ultimately we make money if they click on links and buy the things we're advising, but those reviews are thoroughly independent. I mean, there's so much.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Letting people know how much money they're making. There's all this stuff that's built into that kind of business that we wrestle with too. And we've put up a bunch of firewalls. But if I was running the 172-year-old New York Times newsroom and say, I don't want any of that in here, that's not what we do”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Separate from the Times for a number of years. Like, you know, much more separate than it is today. And that's just part of the, like, how do you make sure you give something like the space and the time and the energy to grow”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What a thorough question. The reason the athletic is not in the newsroom of the New York Times is because we are new owners of a very large enterprise and sports journalism that we have full intention of making, we bought something great and we want to make it even bigger and even more prominent. And the way I would describe what we're trying to do at the athletic is the preeminent brand in global news journalism endeavors to be a preeminent brand in sports journalism for passionate fans of the big teams and leagues in the United States and of European football. And we are very, very focused on doing that in a really big way and in a really impactful way in sports journalism. And I'll just, you said your friends with Brian Lamb, Brian Lamb is the awesome founder of the wirecutter who we acquired it from. And, you know, the wire cutter was.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's talk about that piece in the bundle, right? At the very beginning, you're like, I hope we can talk about the bundle. I want to talk about the bundle loud. I think it was important to lay this foundation. The bundle, right? The key pieces of the bundle are the games. It's the athletic, which is sports. And I want to talk about sports as sort of a unique category to cover. And the wire cutter, which I feel like I should disclose is our competitor because we also do product reviews, but we love the wire cutter. And I'm friends with Ryan Land, so I'm happy it all worked out.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, listen, like if you're right, what I would say is we've got a strategy that is purpose built to withstand like wildly dynamic ecosystem that we don't control. And our job, my job, is to get many, many, many more people to make a direct relationship with us.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be essential to many, many more people, and that's what we're doing. And then three, I would just say we ask, and this is something that's maybe particular to me, it's like, can you imagine in a tough market, in really difficult conditions, can you imagine this is still the right strategy? And what I would say is goes back to your structure point at the beginning of the conversation, this is a company that's been around 172 years. We play a really long game and the question we were asking ourselves always is over five years or ten years or even a generation, is this the path we should be on? And I would say becoming an essential subscription to, you know, millions and millions more people five to 10 years from now, I think that's still going to look like the path we should be on and 25 years from now. I think that's still going to look like the path.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Delivering on the mission. And so we made some really hard calls that I described to you before about being a destination and a subscription business first. The next chapter of that is to say we can do that even more ambitiously and try to be.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By acquiring the athletic, and we thought they were of a particular quality and had an ethos that would fit very well in the New York Times, by the way, it has. So that's why we acquired the athletic and we acquired Wordle to add to the games portfolio because we saw it as an opportunity to bring many, many more people to our games, which ultimately brings many, many more people to our quality journalism. So to give a short answer after a very long-winded one, you know, we are very principle driven. How do we make decisions? What are the principles we're trying to hold up to? You know, the mission is the most important thing in the place. How do you bring people more? How do you help people seek the truth and understand the principal one to, you know, we need a giant audience for our work and a growing business to be able to keep doing”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as part of that, we already had a really successful, amazing recipe app. We had already built this incredible games business, largely on the strength of crosswords, but we introduced spelling bee. We were sort of really showing that that could be a great business. We'd acquired Wirecutter and said, you know, modern day digital consumer reports, we can give people shopping advice as part of that, as part of this strategy, we said, what are the other really big spaces this goes to how do we make decisions? What are the really big spaces that curious people spend their time in and how do we be more of a daily habit that would be synergistic with the New York Times brand? We said sports and we loved what the athletic was doing. We considered, you know, do we go build something? And we said what we would build looks very much like what they have already built. So we acquired the athletics, certainly that we got their fester.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything else is kind of all other bets are off, and we never forget that. So that's the first pillar of the strategy. Second pillar of the strategy is, you know, we're going to help people make the most of their lives and passions. And by the way, the New York Times in print for a print audience, you know, a much smaller audience did that, right? We were a cultural pointer and we had sports journalism and lots of other things, but we said we want to do that now at scale.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got there especially early because we acquired the athletic, but we believe we would have gotten there really early anyway without the athletic that added a million subscribers. And so in 2022, we launched like the next chapter of Make Journalism Worth Paying for. And that I would describe as going from sort of playing defense in our business to playing offense and saying if you said what is the most ambitious construction of what the New York Times can be and do in people's lives, we are aiming to be the essential subscription for every curious person in the English-speaking world who wants to understand and engage deeply with the world. And we're going to do that in three ways. We're going to continue to build on being the world's best news destination, by the way, that is the most important thing we do at the company. It is the main idea of the place. If we don't keep getting that right.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got there a year earlier than we said midway through that process. We said we're going to get there early. We got to put out another target. We said 10 million subscriptions by 2025. We got there early.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've got to get people to make a direct relationship with us. And the other thing we said is, you know, we've got to be essential every day to many more people. And we've got to be an essential daily habit. And so all of that got put into one of these reports that we published in 2015. It was called Our Path Forward, long report, the whole idea of which was a five-word business plan, which said New York Times makes journalism worth paying for. That is the strategy of the company worth paying for first and most through direct to consumer subscriptions. But ultimately this, you know, our journalism has got to be of such a high quality that even against a backdrop of free and less expensive alternatives, people will pay for it. Put out a bunch of targets in 2015. We said we double digital revenue by 2020.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And ultimately, that should lead to a good ad business, by the way it has. Took some time, but it absolutely has. That's now the kind of competitive strength of the ad business. Third thing, which I've just waxed poetic about for the first 20 minutes of this podcast, is we said we're destination.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Friday afternoon in New York in the summer, everybody's summer, but it was like one of the more important, you know, phases of the New York. Times, my family did not love that from like two to six every Friday. I couldn't go anywhere. But that summer, we settled some of the really, really as a small group with a lot of debate settled some of the really big questions that sort of would dictate or threaten the growth potential of the business. One was that, you know, obviously we had to be a digital first company and we had to like not do things to protect print, but rather do things to grow digital. Duh, everybody was doing that at the time. Second one was we called in that, you know, series of summer meetings, we called subscription business first, which commercially was probably the most important thing the Times did for itself. And that meant you don't build things for advertisers because advertisers want them. You build everything because it's good for the mission, good for the consumer.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question. Let me just make a comment on we've changed the strategy of the times. I want to just anchor that in kind of where we are in the strategic journey, and then I'll talk about how I and we made decisions to get there. I got to the company in 2013. We'd sort of survived existential crisis, but it wasn't clear that we had a growth path, and there was a real worry, you know, that the future of the New York Times would not be as bright as its storied past, right? Like we'd gotten past the point where people thought it's the New York Times going to go away. But it was like, could we continue to do the journalism as ambitiously as we were doing it for larger and larger groups of people in 2015, this goes to your question, how do we make decisions, small group of people at the top of the company. And I was lucky to be a part of this news and business, very small group, got together every Friday for a whole summer. I love to say that it was.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you just like the big decoder question it's a classic question, right? You've changed the strategy of times, you've talked about changing the culture and the structure of the times. You bought the athletic. There's a wire cutter deal. How do you make decisions? What's your framework?”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After the leaking of the innovation report, we just said, like, let's just publish this stuff ourselves. So now when we write something that to us feels like, you know, a seminal strategic work that we want everybody to know, we just publish it”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back. I want to come to the bundle now and the athletic, but these are decisions you've made, right? You were the COO, you led this transformation. There were very famous documents that leaked the innovation report, I think, leaked about how the time seems to be more digital than there was a public transformation report.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things work. And we've got to get through that process. But we are make no mistake. We want to pair journalists more. We want this to be a place where the world's most talented people in journalism can go and flourish and feel like it's a good deal for them to be there professionally, personally in every way that you would want to be a part of a company.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the New York Times wants to be the place, I think a huge part of our success formula is that we can be and can remain the place where the world's best journalists come to do the best work of their careers. And they come because they feel fairly paid and they feel supported in the work and they feel like all of the things that would enable you to be at your best in your professional life that we provide those things. That is what we are aiming for. I deeply want and I would say my other colleagues in leadership, including the publisher and chairman, deeply want to as quickly as possible arrive at a contract that pays our journalists substantially more than we have in the past, you know, more than we have in other contracts. And we are prepared incredibly well prepared to do that. There's also a process to how these”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This one You've talked a lot about money and the first dollar going into the newsroom. I know that you know that you've got a union fight with that newsroom going on right now and they're hearing you say the first dollar is going to the newsroom and they're saying the thing that we want is higher minimum salaries. Why is that a blocker? Why hasn't that just happened? If the first dollar is indeed going directly into the newsroom.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Broad answer is that we believe a lot of the digital product development playbook we've used at the times and the advertising playbook which is also really digital product development Is this going to work for the athletic? Yeah, sorry to the extent that that's the question. Absolutely. We believe that we can create a really powerful engine of demand, right, to use the sort of business term by applying some of the same principles. And I'll give you an advertising one. We've got this great ad business at the time that's powered by, you know, we've got a huge registered user base whose data we can use in very privacy-forward ways that make our ads really effective at targeting audiences for advertisers. We're going to build a very similar business on the athletic for a whole new category of advertisers using similar technology. So my answer is broadly yes to the question you're asking. That is what we're trying to do.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More journalism, it's way less product. Are you saying that you're going to infuse the times product stack into the athletic to increase its subscriber retention and growth and eventually profitability?”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, but just on the specifics of that, there's like links from the Times Athletic. That's great. But what this thing you're describing, this combination of technology and journalism, the athletic does not have that right now. It started on a different platform”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The big thought on the athletic is preeminent brand and global news journalism is building really powerful destination and engine, coverage engine in sports journalism. So that's the big idea. Connecting the athletic to the times and being able to direct some of the power of the New York Times as a destination, as a brand people ask for by name.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So on that note, right, you're at the place where you're going to start seeing a higher return on the technology investment, software style margins. But you bought the athletic for $550 million last year, according to the last earnings report I'm looking at here. Last year it lost $36 million. Is the thought that by moving it to this platform that you have that's working for the times proper, that you can get those margins out of the athletic or are you going to leave it on the platform that's on now?”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say investors is that we are beginning to spend less money on marketing because the tech is working well enough that we can spend less money on marketing. I'm going to make one more sort of economic point and I'll contrast us to maybe some of the other tech companies you talk too. Go back to that thing I said to you before, 50 to 100 million people come to the New York Times every week, vast majority of them are not already subscribers. So we are already generating Own audience. We don't have, and the majority of our subscription starts do not come from paid marketing. They come from our organic audience funnel and news and sports and games. These are like powerful Organic audience funnels. And so that's why I would say you also haven't seen us like lurch forward hiring thousands of engineers.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That gets better, you can invest less. In the marketing and you get to a point, I would say this is maybe where we veer from a tech company or journalism company. Our journalism has to be extraordinary. It's got to have great breadth and we've got to keep innovating in the formats. We are pretty well placed. I mean, I'm not going to tell you we're not going to keep investing in digital product development, but ultimately you get to a point where you get leverage out of that investment because ultimately you're getting more people to come into that product. And the fact, you know, one of the things we've told”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of software investment, that has been a huge area of focus. We've said now for half a dozen years we're going to invest in the journalism. We're going to invest in the digital product development that helps people find and experience that journalism and the other stuff we do. And we're going to invest in marketing so that people understand why the times is different and worth paying for and relevant to them, right? What is changing is we've been investing for years now in the first two in the journalism and the digital product development. And stop me here if I get too technical. But because the vast majority of our subscribers come not through paid marketing, but through that engine, which is a combination of the journalism and the software that makes people find and experience it and want more of it.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Single largest investment at the New York Times is in the journalism period. First dollar in the place goes to the journalism, period. We will rise and fall. We will rise on the quality, the independence, the breadth of our journalism. And we will fall if at any point that gets compromised in a major way. And the thing that the most important thing, just to go back to the earlier conversation that got the times to where it is today, is thanks to the control structure, we kept investing in the journalism even in really dark times, right? Kept investing in the journalism. And that, you know, I've been here almost a decade. The thing I'm most”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Download the New York Times app if you haven't already. Please download the New York Times app and cooking and the athletic and games.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Getting people to download your app, getting people to be able to do other things from your destinations that drive your business is the game.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A marketer, we're out in the world, we make TV commercials. We are constantly trying to help people understand the breadth and the quality of what the Times does so that however the ecosystem may change, we're prepared for it. So I would agree with you that we are all every business I know that's in the content business is subject to an ecosystem. They don't control and, you know, making direct relationships.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know we're, I don't know that I would call it hedging, I would say we've got a really principled view that news in particular, but all the spaces we play in beyond news now, games, shopping advice, recipes, sports journalism, these are relationship businesses, news in particular is a relationship business, right? You should have a direct relationship with a provider who you trust and who you believe is going to make good use of your limited time, right? And one of the things that has also happened with the internet, you know, which has brought us so much, is it's also gotten harder and harder to find things that are great and worthy. And so we are obsessed with making sure that it is well understood how great the journalism and the recipes and the shopping advice and so forth are in the New York Times.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would agree with you on the premise that Google plays a really big role in the ecosystem. And I would just point back to the comment I made earlier that for something like six or seven years, we've been obsessively focused on getting more people to ask us by name to come to our destination.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I've lived through Yahoo going away. I've lived through Facebook going away. I've lived through a very strange moment of Snapchat going away. I feel like we would be making a mistake if we didn't envision what it looks like if it goes away. I don't think it's going away tomorrow, but I do worry that every media executive that I've ever spoken to is deeply aware of how much Google drives the top of funnel, of how much the entire architecture of the internet is organized around Google's wants and needs and how little self-awareness there is that that is a critical dependency instead of a benign relationship.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or make a direct relationship with us. That's part of it. The other part of it that we've got a good track record of doing is when the ecosystem changes in ways that make sense for what our mission is, you know, making sure we evolve in a way that helps continue to make that prospect funnel rich. So I would agree with you. It's a moment of pressure from the platforms in the ecosystem. And I also have a lot of confidence that the times is, you know, and other journalism organizations have made their way through those moments of pressure before.”
2023-03-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT