The New York Times cultivates an image as the preferred read of the intellectual elite, but at least one of the paper’s higher-ups seems to think its customers aren’t all that bright.During a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood New York conference, Gerald Marzorati, the Times’s assistant managing editor for new media and strategic initiatives, explained why the paper’s print business is still robust. “We have north of 800,000 subscribers paying north of $700 a year for home delivery,” Marzorati said. “Of course, they don’t seem to know that.”
As evidence that Times subscribers don’t realize how much a subscription costs, he pointed to what happened when the paper raised its home-delivery price by 5 percent during the recession: Only 0.01 percent of subscribers canceled. “I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re literally not understanding what they’re paying,” he said. “That’s the beauty of the credit card.”
The NYT is mocks its readers. In so many ways this scenario reminds me of the London premiere of Banksy’s “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”
Celebrities streamed past a graffitied sign stating “RICH IDIOTS” on their way in; the majority of the photo ops had the sign in the background and the majority of the posh audience likely didn’t realize that it was directed at them, thus the irony. This is pretty much the same.
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