Arthur Sulzberger: 'We Will Stop Printing The New York Times Sometime In The Future'

The publisher of the New York Times acknowledged Wednesday that the newspaper will go out of print — eventually.

"We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD," Arthur Sulzberger told an audience at a London media summit Wednesday.

Sulzberger's statement came in response to a prediction that the newspaper would go out-of-print by 2015.

"This sounds obvious, but it's a big deal," Business Insider founder Henry Blodget wrote. "The economics of the online news business will not support the infrastructure or newsroom that the printed paper supports. Unless the New York Times Company can come up with a miracle new digital revenue stream, therefore, it will eventually have to be restructured and downsized (or sold to a deep-pocketed Sydney Harmon-type [sic] who runs it at a loss out of love)."

Early next year, the newspaper will introduce a metered-model paywall to its website, which Sulzberger said "has the benefit of allowing our millions of readers who come to us through search engine to still find our content."

Comments

[Dennis Ridnouer]

05:56 PM on 09/14/2010

Tomorrow would not be a day to soon.

[GoodRead]

03:13 PM on 09/14/2010

NEWS FLASH!
Dateline: Humanity: We will all stop living, sometime in the future. NO iPad app available!

[Mark Morlock]

02:00 AM on 09/14/2010

Keith Olbermann said the New York Times printed a story about the mosque and a half that were inside the two world trade center towers. Can anyone tell me if they've seen that story here? Or do I need to go directly to the source?

[Badgirl]

07:50 PM on 09/13/2010

Scary. what if Murdoch's media empire is the last one printing..­.? What if China is the editor-at-­large? Its an Orwellian nightmare !

[libwithaclue]

04:20 PM on 09/13/2010

For my money, they could have stopped printing this rag back in early 2003 when they were drumming up the invasion of Iraq. They were one of the primary enabler that allowed Pres Cheney to launch his illegal, immoral war.

[vegetablelollipop]

12:35 AM on 09/13/2010

My neighbor never picks up her NYTs. So she said I could pick it up. I always use it to line the bottom of my bird cage so my sparrows can have a place to dump. My cat also loves to shred the NYT. As for reading it...it's way to focused on one type of people more than others.

[MIKEinNYC]

10:36 PM on 09/12/2010

Not to get excited.

He said they'd stop "printing" it. He did not say that it's going out of business. The reality is that electronic media is encroachin­g upon and supersedin­g printed media.

One way or another the Times will go on and deservedly so. It's a wonderful resource.

[Samantha Monteleone]

10:18 PM on 09/12/2010

All good things must come to an end eventually­.

[vegetablelollipop]

12:36 AM on 09/13/2010

Samantha, that's a cute picture. Would you be angry if I ask if you date gals? We could sit and read the NYT together..­.

[Samantha Monteleone]

08:12 PM on 09/13/2010

Appreciate the offer, but I am engaged to the most incredible man in the world. :)

[c-tom]

04:04 PM on 09/11/2010

All the posts saying how bad the NYT is; no one is saying there is a better paper out there.

[Kareem Harper]

11:46 AM on 09/13/2010

Ignore them. They are called trolls.

[HLL]

11:13 AM on 09/11/2010

" I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it."

~ Thomas Jefferson

[gogogadget]

01:47 AM on 09/11/2010

how about go out of business

[Trubulmaker]

08:10 PM on 09/10/2010

As Howard Friel and Richard Falk have meticulous­ly demonstrat­ed (The Record of the Paper and Israel-Pal­estine on Record), the Times has for years miserably failed its responsibi­lity to accurately report the news whenever it pertains to the Israel-Pal­estine conflict. There is little reason to believe it is more thorough or fair in reporting other important issues. Good riddance.

[Ramblin Joe]

07:54 PM on 09/10/2010

Been reading NYT on iPad since spring and love it. Packed w/info, interactiv­e, easier by far to navigate than "old technology­" plus no messy ink or refuse. Get over -- times are always changing.

[Steven Hooper]

05:16 AM on 09/11/2010

despite of tha times what will happen when the informatio­n superhighw­ay breakdown?­,the electronic system is not as perfect as people claim it to be. the computer is convenient but not all of that!

[Dbos]

09:23 AM on 09/12/2010

yep and can be manipulate­d by editing the original easier than a hard copy.

[whyus]

06:02 PM on 09/10/2010

What a shame. We get the NYT 3 days a week. There is so much informatio­n in it. Not only that, but the articles are written so well that we even read the Sports pages.

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

12:19 AM on 09/13/2010

I would agree Whyus. I do not take the NYT, but I do subscribe daily to the SF Chronicle, which provides me a lifeline to intelligen­t, sensitive analysis of news and feature stories. Granted, we can all access the PC to obtain both periodical­s, but there is just something about holding a thick bundle of newspaper goodies in your hands after it has arrived with a thump at your front door.

Dinosaurs like me will slowly fade into communicat­ions tarpits, but I nostagical­ly believe that we all will be the poorer for the passing of print media. Already, I have students who read neither published material nor on line news and feature stories. So much for electronic­s serving as a panacea for the dying newspapers­....

[Pod-gers]

04:44 PM on 09/10/2010

This we know, it is not news.