Printing The New York Times Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle

Nicholas Carson of Silicon Alley Insider did the math and determined that it costs the Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead.

Are we trying to say the the New York Times should force all its print subscribers onto the Kindle or else? No. That would kill ad revenues and also, not everyone loves the Kindle.

What we’re trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.

March 23, 2009 by 3 Comments
Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , ,
  • http://fernsehtek.wordpress.com Fernsehtek

    Keep math like this going, one of these data points will finally sink in and newspapers will evolve. Running a paper today, with the limitations involved in printing and distributing it, makes it as business savvy as running a lemonade stand on mom’s money.

  • Pingback: The News Factor: News, opinion, current events — a rewarding news experience » Blog Archive » Not exactly what we in the newspaper business wanted to hear

  • http://johnbowman.net John Bowman

    Their math is highly suspect. My comment on the SAI post:

    There are so many poor assumptions here.

    First of all, as has been pointed out, the number of loyal subscribers is not the same as the number of readers.

    Second, your assumption that everyone who isn’t involved in the newsroom is involved in delivery is laughable.

    I understand that this is meant to be back-of-the-envelope stuff, but c’mon.