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The New York Times is one of the oldest newspapers in the US and, between print and digital, has the largest base of subscribers. The NYT claims it has 10 million subscribers—more than 90% of those are digital. A heavy investment in digital strategy in the mid 2000s may have saved the declining newspaper from the fate of that of 25% or more of papers across the country since 2005.
The NYT is now a juggernaut of not only local New York and international news, but boasts popular podcasts, offshoots like Cooking, and of course Games including everybody’s mother’s (and my) favorite game, Wordle. It’s a media titan.
For this post, I analyzed data from the NYT that includes all the articles written in the past year and published on the digital platform (nytimes.com). This data set spans July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024.
A Torrent of Journalism
The sheer size of the NYT allows them to publish a lot. Like, a lot. In the past year, more than 46,000 stories, essays, and editorials.
There is a constant, high rate of output when it comes to content. Over the past year, July and December appear to be the months with the least amount of published pieces. That seems to coincide with “vacation” months in the US. Most people are consumed with holidays and family in December and probably don’t read the news as much. And July tends to be a “slow” month in US politics. But of course The Times is not just politics.
There are many news desks, or specialized departments within the newsroom, at the NYT. Foreign Affairs tends to be the most written about subject with Culture and Business close behind. The “Other” categorization consists of a few more dozen desks including Arts & Leisure, Styles, and Metropolitan (whatever that is). Below is a complete breakdown (by month) of these news desks alphabetically, with a heatmap to draw your attention to those busiest desks.
The first 150 years or so of the NYT was essentially a once per day publication. But now that the internet has made news a 24-hour phenomenon, the news desks are constantly publishing. Some of it ends up in print first thing in the morning, but according to the NYT website, there are new articles every single hour of every day.
When you “bin” the publish times of individual articles, you’re left with this above chart. The large majority of content appears to be “published” on the NYT website between 5a - 6a EST. This is about the time that those physical paper subscribers can probably start to expect to have the paper in hand. I’m taking a stab in the dark to guess that web traffic to the NYT starts to build at 6a, so it makes sense to have the newest and best articles ready to read by then.
The Writers
The New York Times has 1,700 journalists across the globe writing, editing, and creating. Over the past 12 months, the paper has attributed bylines to more than 1,300 of these individuals. Some of these 1,300 may have had a single byline on a single story, but others appear to have more than full time jobs writing for the Times. In fact, 111 people have had 100 or more credits in the past year.
For regular readers of the Times or even casual consumers of media, many of these names above may be familiar. Maggie Haberman, for example is both a senior political correspondent for The New York Times and a frequent guest and political analyst on CNN. She has nearly as many credits as days in the past year. Andrew Ross Sorkin has been a contributor since he was 18 years old and is editor-at-large of DealBook, which publishes the main business newsletter of the NYT. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there are some celebrities here, but certainly there are some well known figures on the above list.
And what are all these writers actually writing about?
The Headlines
The New York Times for most people conjures the image of a worldwide news organization—which it is. But for New Yorkers, it’s also the local daily paper. When analyzing the headlines of some 46,000 stories, you could probably guess some of the most common themes, topics, and words (the basis for the below analysis).
Not shockingly, Biden and Trump are by far the most mentioned individuals and topics by the NYT. Though the latter has been name checked in headlines more than 60% more than the former. (Not to be confused with the former guy, who is in fact the latter.) Politics, US government, and elections dominate this count more than expected when comparing this to the news desk analysis above. Culture, Business, and Op-eds most likely tend to be centered around politics after all.
52 Weeks of Headlines
Viewing certain topics over time sometimes produces some random noise with no trends, but this is not always the case. Over the past 52 weeks, the NYT headlines’ mention of Israel and Gaza makes complete sense. From June 2023 until October 2023, the majority of Israel headlines were mostly centered around the judicial reform protests. There’s a stark contrast in the Times coverage of Israel before the Hamas attacks on 10/7 and after. (Speaking only about the numbers…)
Comparing this to the other international war that has been sharing the headlines, involving Ukraine and Russia, you can tell when the Israeli-Gaza war started just by looking for the dip in coverage on the Ukraine-Russia war. The first month of the Israel-Gaza war corresponded with the least amount of Ukraine-Russia headlines of 2023. Leading up to the 2-year anniversary of the 2022 Russian invasion there was a surge of headlines about Russia and Ukraine, but the Israel-Gaza war, according to the headlines analysis, has gotten much much more coverage in the past 52 weeks.
Some topics as you can imagine are cyclical, like headlines about Hurricanes, Thanksgiving, or Spring Break. Others are less so. This publication is based in the US after all, so shootings are part of the day-to-day coverage of the NYT (except apparently during the week of Christmas, which is good I guess?).
Politics: Reporting vs. Making the News
With the 2024 US Presidential election just around the corner, this time period of July 2023 through June 2024 is rife with good data! As seen above, Donald Trump was a rather popular topic covered by the Times. Just for reference, he declared he was running for President again at the end of 2022, so he was already a Republican candidate by the beginning of this data set.
It’s been a long year. The former President was criminally indicted three separate times, found civilly liable for sexual abuse, and a New York judge ordered him to pay $355 million for years of fraud. And that’s so overwhelming that you probably didn’t even realize that the above isn’t entirely true because he was actually criminally indicted four separate times. Oops. But if you look at the coverage of Donald in the past year through the headlines, you can’t really identify when most of these things happened.
Maybe he became the subject of slightly more NYT headlines after his first criminal indictment, but this increase could have as much to do with his felonies as him locking up the Republican nomination.
Speaking of the nomination process, a look at his competitors shows a really clear picture.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had significantly more headlines about him than his non-Trump competitors in 2023. And this doesn’t even include my favorite headline about his campaign, Ron DeSantis Going Door To Door To Beg Own Campaign Staff To Vote For Him. You might be forgiven to think that he simply had more headlines about him as he was fighting Mickey Mouse or banning abortions, but it turns out that he became rather irrelevant in the headlines almost the moment he ended his presidential campaign. 49 of 50 states and the rest of the world probably don’t care to hear too much about Florida these days. (I know—I live here.)
Similarly, Nikki Haley was surging in the headlines prior to her abruptly ending her campaign and then went 10 weeks with only a single mention in the NYT’s headlines.
I am not exactly sure if Mike Pence and the rest were ever running for President, but their mentions in NYT headlines seemed to have flattened out, if they were ever actually in an upward trend in the first place. But as insignificant as Chris Christie seems in this above chart, adding the former president back into the mix shows that nobody else was ever actually that significant.
Taylor’s Version
To end on something a little more upbeat, I fall back to Taylor Swift. Here are the articles we are working with:
Though unfortunately she did not capture quite as many headlines as some of the above names, her year in headlines is exciting and fascinating. And weirdly enough for a musician and pop icon, political at times.
A movie theater debut, football, and lastly, a new album kept Tay Tay in the NYT headlines consistently. Just wait until she usurps the US Presidential election this fall and her ascendancy in NYT headlines will be monumental!