Reddit and HN traffic is not common. It's a small share of the general population, and further, probably overlaps little with the target NYT audience whom they want to upsell to a paid subscription. I read HN; my extended family has never heard of it.
This reminds me of people who are unaware of how small the combined market share is for rdio and spotify, or why networks don't abandon cable tv revenue for cord cutters, despite how seemingly convenient and inexpensive they are. Most people listen to the radio (in the car). Most people subscribe to cable.
Reddit gets over 100 million uniques a month. The NYT gets about 12 million.
I know that the two organisations work very differently behind the scenes but as some one else here mentioned, they're both content aggregators at their core. And let's be honest, if a story is on one news website, it's on all of them so it's not like the NYT is a special place that has all the news no one else has.
There's a lot of reasons why reddit gets much more traffic, but I genuinely believe the way they present their content is more accessible to more people, and that's why they can so successfully grow and retain their user base, and I think that's why simple list presentations consistently win out over complicated presentations. Flip book might be a more sensible comparison, that's an aggregator and it's a bore to use after a while.
I suspect it’s more that image macros and memes appeal to a wider audience than does the kind of carefully curated news, analysis, and longform content that the NYT produces. I guess I’m not really sure where to begin comparing audience metrics between reddit and NYT as if their offerings were similar at all? Is this a real comparison that real people are making?
Reddit and HN traffic is not common. It's a small share of the general population, and further, probably overlaps little with the target NYT audience whom they want to upsell to a paid subscription. I read HN; my extended family has never heard of it.
This reminds me of people who are unaware of how small the combined market share is for rdio and spotify, or why networks don't abandon cable tv revenue for cord cutters, despite how seemingly convenient and inexpensive they are. Most people listen to the radio (in the car). Most people subscribe to cable.