The New York Times’ Traffic Drops 24 Percent in April

The New York Times’ share of newspaper sites’ traffic hit a 12 month low in April, dropping from a 13 percent share to 10 percent. Overall, page views fell 24 percent, while other newspaper sites collectively only declined by seven percent.

While this seems like pretty bad news, don’t jump off the Brooklyn Bridge just yet, because there are reasons behind the lull.

As Ad Age notes, there was a lot of news happening in March, and aside from that, April was the first month where post-paywall numbers could be scrutinized. Oh, and regarding that paywall, it appears to be working:

‘Our framework suggests that even if The New York Times loses 20% of its web traffic, it will need to add about 107k subscribers to break even,’ Citi analyst Leo Kulp said in a note to investors. Times Co. management said during its first-quarter conference call on April 21 that it had already added 100,000 subscribers, Mr. Kulp noted.

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