Kara Swisher:
We — Walt and I — Walt Mossberg were the O.G. of all this stuff. It’s funny when it’s like, oh, this is new. I’m like, no, we did it a long time ago, because we did see what was coming and the importance of digitization of media and how the consumer had changed really drastically.
And we also supplemented it by having a conference that was highly lucrative that could pay the bills too, because news is hard. Advertising is tougher. Some people have done subscriptions really well. Like, The Information does great journalism and does subscriptions. Other things rely on advertising, like we did at AllThingsD, or sponsorship like we did at the Code Conferences.
There’s all kinds of things you could look at, and The New York Times is one way of doing it. They do everything, they cook everything internally, right? But they did an important diversification. News is not the driver of the growth of The New York Times right now. It’s Wordle. It’s cooking. It’s sports. It’s all kinds of things.
And that’s important, for a news organization to have multiple revenue streams around it, especially as people, especially young people, go off and get things from TikTok or Instagram or wherever they happen — or YouTube, for example, has become critically important in the TV watching space.
And so The Post hasn’t really done anything. They don’t have a podcast division to speak of. Other companies have done a really good job at that, and it can be very lucrative. I have some ideas, which I will outline if I get a meeting with Jeff. I have known him for — I knew — I met Jeff before he was a billionaire, when he first started Amazon.
He’s a wonderful entrepreneur. And I think he has to understand that maybe where he is today is not where he was and that he may not be the correct owner for this thing. That’s all. I just want to talk to you about it and understand why he wants to own it if he continues to do these things that are causing a huge amount of people to leave, very — a huge amount of talent.
And that’s not — that’s hard to get back. So I have some ideas of different structures, financial structures, the way you could do it, and I’m sure other people do.
