Sulzberger: We'll Stop Printing Times, 'Date TBD'

This from Arthur Sulzberger Jr.: "We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD." OK, "this sounds obvious," writes Henry Blodget at Business Insider, "but it's a big deal." Unless the paper finds a "sugar-daddy," it will surely have to downsize over time given the realities of online revenue. Blodget estimates the Times spends $200 million a year on its current newsroom, a figure that will likely be cut in half even if the coming paywall is "highly successful" with 1 million or so subscribers. More on Sulzberger's comments at EditorsWeblog.

At Gawker, Hamilton Nolan weighs in: "Online advertising can generate enough revenue to support an operation like Gawker Media, but not an operation like the New York Times. The great newspapers will surely shrink their staffs and become more efficient, but ultimately, expensive enterprise journalism requires paying subscribers." As for fair use in the new age: "Both sides—those first-line journalism operations who write up the news, and those second-line web operations that aggregate, parse, discuss, and promote that news—know that they need each other. Some fair agreement for the sharing of content and revenue will come to pass." (More New York Times stories.)