Mark making

Former DG Mark Thompson is pretty pleased with himself at the New York Times, releasing details of record digital subscriptions ahead of the paper's full year results later this week.

The operation won 1 million net new subscribers over the twelve months, to a total of 5 million. There are 3.4m million full service digital subscribers; 300,000 pay for access to New York Times Cooking; and 900,000 are hooked on their crossword service. 900,000 still pay for a year's worth of print.

Better still, digital revenue is up to $800m, and has doubled since 2015. The number of journalists employed is up from 1300 to 1600. The NYT podcast, "The Daily" tops Podtrac's US chart; the group's various podcasts total 10m monthly unique users in the States, and get some 73m downloads and streams across the world. The Weekly, the NYT's venture into tv, is carried on FX and Hulu, and is attracting advertisers - next week it'll show NYT senior hacks interviewing nine Democrat candidates for leader, and make its own recommendation.