- Adweek, Wednesday, February 24, 2016 9:13 AM
During a keynote discussion at Social Media Week, New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson compared using ad blockers to stealing a print issue from a newsstand, according to a report in
Adweek.
"Trying to use and get benefit of the
Times' journalism without making any contribution to how it's paid is not good," he said. "Everything we do should be worth paying for. Everything should
feel like it's HBO rather than a broadcast network." Thompson said the
Times' subscription model only covers some of its costs. The newspaper, along with most other publishers, is
confronting the issue of ad blocking, which is wreaking havoc on its revenues. The report said Thompson is considering banning ad-blocking readers who aren't subscribers, as
Wired has already
done. As print revenue declines, digital advertising is becoming that much more important for the
Times, which has a circulation of 1.38 million, behind
USA Today and
The Wall
Street Journal.
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Next he will complain about those of us who read his newspaper in the public library, as we have done for decades. Failure to pay any attention to ads (without being forced to do so) is hardly theft, especially when the content is not behind a paywall! Welcome to 2016, Mr. Thompson, where suitable substitutes abound on the Internet. Look what the web has done to the recording industry. Go visit freebookspot.es (or libgen.io) sometime. Now that's real theft.