In March, the publisher introduced a Listen tab to the home screen of the News app, alongside Home, Play, and You. The update reflects the company’s belief that podcasts and audio journalism have now become central to its overall offering.
“I see this as audio graduating from Off-Broadway to Broadway,” Dolnick said. “But now audio journalism has become so central to what the Times does that it belongs on the main stage.”
Meeting audiences where they are
When the Audio app launched, it made The New York Times one of only a handful of news organizations—alongside NPR and two Dutch publishers, De Correspondent and NRC—that sought to steer listeners toward an owned-and-operated property for audio programming, rather than just to platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, which also host many of The Times’ audio offerings.
Its sunsetting reflects not just how rapidly the digital media environment has shifted in recent years, but also the perpetual tug of war publishers are engaged in when it comes to attracting audiences to their properties compared to meeting them where they already are.
“Most people consume podcasts through YouTube and Spotify, so they were facing the classic on-platform, off-platform challenge,” a former Times employee involved with the app’s rollout told ADWEEK. “This was their shot at trying to get people habituated to a Times-owned platform.”
“Separate products make sense for audiences that are clearly distinct and where the economics can justify a separate experience,” said Ben Berentson, managing director of Code and Theory. “The concept of there being an ‘audio’ audience is going away, just as the idea of a ‘mobile’ audience has mostly gone away.”
Details of the move
The News app will now host The Times’ full podcast archive, including the video assets that accompany certain podcasts, such as the Ezra Klein Show and Hard Fork.
Third-party publishers that had their content featured in the Audio app, like The New Yorker, will not be included in the News app.
In addition to migrating its podcast library to the News app, The Times is also trying to interweave audio throughout the platform in new, more intuitive ways, Dolnick said.
For example, the publisher is working to improve its personalization capabilities, showcasing new episodes of shows that listeners have indicated an interest in. It also plans to more widely integrate audio versions of text articles, enabling a user to read part of a story then listen to the rest, later, while driving or running.
The overarching goal is to make more of its content available in a variety of formats, allowing users to consume the news in whichever way they prefer, whether that changes over the course of a day or a lifetime, Dolnick said.