Is the smell of a rose as good as the real thing?

Subscription strategies for the big players might seem simple for those further down the content food chain, but we can learn from how they think.

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:14, 16 April 2026

Inherent dangers exist when you draw conclusions from what the huge and powerful do when you are not huge and powerful yourself. If you are sailing a dinghy, an instruction course based upon the user guide to the USS Nimitz is likely of little help, other than affirming that, yes, you are in the same sea and you must deal with it.

Same water, different rules.

With that caveat stated, this week has presented an opportunity to understand some of the thinking behind a couple of big publishing players regarding their subscription strategies, those being the New York Times and The Economist, courtesy of Stratechery and INMA, respectively.

Both publications have weathered the digital storm better than most, and the NYT enjoys a special place in my publishing pantheon for vowing, back when it looked like platforms would eat us all, that they wouldn't go down without a fight and instead would be "the last man standing" when it was all over if that's what it would take. It was a defiance you couldn't find elsewhere, and a mindset still manifest as the title happily drags the AI boys to court over content thievery. Good on them, for which we all benefit.

The part of NYT thinking most interesting to our audience is around the decisions and data behind what content is available outside the paywall in order to draw people in to become paying customers. From this, everyone can learn, large or small. 

In the Stratchery interview, NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien outlined what she referred to as the "Four Ds" by which the NYT makes its judgement on what strategy to pursue:

• We have to be a daily habit
  
  
• We have to have direct relationships with people
  
  
• We have to be a destination and by destination, I mean, we do most of the economic value creation and we also give the best experience if you actually come to us in the whole of the experience.
  
  
• The fourth D is we only do drive-bys if they’re deliberate. 

The first three of those are easily understandable as publishing goals we all pretty much aim to meet. The last however, is a little more nuanced, as it concerns the NYT's relationship with the platforms.

By "drive-bys", Levien is referring to NYT content that appears for free on platforms. Even a publisher such as large as The Gray Lady needs such exposure, however they are in the position to control exactly what makes it out there, and what their potential subscriber net looks like. 

I dare say it's worth contrasting this with a theoretical smaller publisher that has one piece of content take off to a wider audience and much excitement, only to find that such audience bonanzas are usually short lived, and hard to repeat. 

The NYT has long absorbed this fact, and now only makes such content available if there is a clear reason to do so. They do not require brand awareness as such, yet the underlying attitude that publishers should not be grateful to platforms, and treat them for they are, is a good one which we can all learn from.

Over at The Economist, they are doubling-down on the human aspect of content creation, a strategy particularly notable at a publication that does not feature bylines and one that is up against, as we all are, AI-generated slop. The thinking behind having no bylines was originally a strategy of institutional and collective authority: if you are reading an Economist piece, then that is what the entire Economist as a publication thinks about this matter. It has worked very well.

It is obvious then that The Economist doesn't wish to abandon this "hive mind" personification of itself as that is what marks it out from the pack. But how to deal with that fact in a market currently awash with personality-driven media? 

Asked about this by INMA's excellent Greg Piechota,  Nada Arnot, executive vice president of marketing at The Economist, told him: "We've had discussions about it, but I don’t think we’re willing to let that practise go because the strength of that anonymity for the written content is that it reinforces that the authority sits in our newsroom and not within the ego of each individual journalist.

"So when you’re reading an article from The Economist, you’re tapping into the hive mind of that newsroom, which is incredibly powerful in terms of a value proposition to our subscribers."

Is having the space to buck trends, and do something unique, only a choice which is the luxury of large, distinct publishers? It certainly is a fact that many smaller outfits feel they have little choice but to slavishly follow the rules and whims (often the same thing) of the platforms, and comply with whatever the latest trend is in content to stay relevant or in business.

It's quite possible the NYT and The Economist have both survived because of their unwillingness to bow down to the digital barons, and while it might be easy to think "they were always going to survive", I really don't think that is case given the tumult and disruption we have seen in our industry over the past three or so decades. It takes sustained effort to sustain quality, and that's what people are buying.

As a last thought, if you have a subscription that features gift articles, make sure you give them all away each month. Gotta keep that pipeline flowing.