NYT launches campaign to educate audiences about paying for quality journalism

The New York Times is running a new global brand campaign called 'The Truth Is Worth It.' It aims to show their readers that the time, commitment, and tenacity required by its investigative teams and reporters worldwide is only possible with a sustainable subscription model.

"We’re only able to deliver our particular brand of deeply-reported journalism because we make the investment in the people and resources required to do it at the highest quality level," said David Rubin, chief marketing officer, New York Times, who spearheads the project.

"The campaign comes at a time when anti-press rhetoric is on the rise and print circulations are declining," he explained.

The newspaper has published a series of videos and picture adverts online that showcase its most remarkable investigative features.

These include How to Get Away With Murder in Small-Town India and Puerto Rico Revises Death Toll.

The newspaper saw a strong boost in its subscription business around the 2016 US elections, referred to by the publisher the as 'Trump bump.'

However, despite the efforts that news outlets put into looking for innovative forms of storytelling, and various subscription and payment models to support and supersede advertising revenue, fewer than one in ten people in the UK pay for online news, according to the RISJ report.

"The tide is turning, though," said Rubin. "Income from our subscribers now accounts for nearly two-thirds of our total revenue, and we have more than 3 million digital-only subscriptions, so we know there’s a growing appetite for truthful news readers can trust," he added.

"We believe the quality of understanding one gets from reading The Times is worth paying for. That journalism takes hard work, expertise, money, and time. In today’s era, it can only happen with readers’ direct support. 

"Our campaign is about educating a broad audience that if they want quality news and not just whatever comes in their feed, they have to pay for it."

Interested to learn more about financing journalism in the digital age? Join the debate at newsrewired conference on 6 March 2019. Book your places here.

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