NYTimes: My 2023 Wish List
A New York Times subscription is a lot more than news … if you can navigate the various apps.
Note: See also my 2023 wish lists for Apple Music and Netflix.
Over the last decade, the New York Times has done a best-in-the-business job of navigating the transition from print to digital by making smart investments in itself and its acquisitions. Where the Washington Post, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, etc., have withered, the New York Times is bigger and better than ever.
The Times launched a digital subscription in 2011, launched the Cooking app in 2014, bought consumer guide The Wirecutter in 2016, launched The Daily podcast in 2017, bought audio app Audm in 2020, bought online word game Wordle in early 2022, and bought sports news app The Athletic in late 2022.
Throughout, the Times has invested in news — hiring top reporters, breaking news, winning Pulitzer Prizes, building Times Opinion in a juggernaut vertical, and constantly evolving the website and mobile apps — and says its 10.75 million print and digital subscriptions in November 2022 is on pace for 15 million by the end of 2027.
The leadership across executive, news, product, engineering, and marketing has built a subscription product that’s greater than the sum of its parts. What I most want to see in 2023 is more entry points and customization in the flagship NYTimes app and more refinement in and alignment with those other parts.
1. Give Me All the Maggie Haberman
The highest-engagement feature for me on the Wall Street Journal’s iPhone app — the one that drives almost all of my app opens — is notifications of new articles written by particular reporters. I follow Joe Flint (media business), Joanna Stern (personal tech), and a few other WSJ, and I get a notification when one of them has a new byline.
The Times has an extensive selection of newsletters for columnists — Paul Krugman (economics), Maureen Down (politics), David Wallace-Wells (climate), etc. — that includes links to the columns, but there’s no equivalent to get an instant notification from the NYTimes app when a Times reporter publishes a news story.
The Athletic app, which the Times bought in 2022, allows you to follow and get notifications for individual reporters. As the Times brings the NYTimes and Athletic engineering teams closer together, I’m hoping to see NYTimes notifications smarten up.
2. Where the Heck is Wirecutter?
One of the more bewildering integrations of a Times acquisition has been Wirecutter, which is the 21st-century equivalent of Consumer Reports, a phenomenal, reputable service, and practically invisible on the NYTimes app and on nytimes.com.
The Times lists Wirecutter as one of its five main brands in its marketing materials (see image at the top of this newsletter), but there is no Wirecutter iPhone app and no easy way to find Wirecutter reviews on the app.
On the NYTimes app, there are 40-plus subjects listed on the Sections tab — including Obituaries and Australia — but no Wirecutter. On nytimes.com, Wirecutter is not among the 19 subjects listed on the top-nav or the 23 subjects listed on the side-nav.
If you scroll far enough down the main screen of the NYTimes app, you’ll see a handful of Wirecutter stories (“The Best Canned Tomatoes,” “All the Headphones Wirecutter Recommends”), but there’s no dedicated section anywhere on the NYTimes app.
3. Let me Customize the ‘Sections’ Tab
The easiest way to navigate to particular areas of the NYTimes app is through the Sections tab at the bottom right of the app, but you can’t customize it. If your main interests are Theater, Music, and Food, there’s no way to prioritize those subjects to the top of the menu as you can in the Apple News+ app.
There is a comfort zone between the extremes of ultra-simplicity that lacks customization and ultra-customization that lacks simplicity, and I’d like to see the Sections tab move a smidge closer to customization.
4. Turn the ‘For You’ Tab Into a Better Twitter
There are four tabs on the bottom-nav of the NYTimes iPhone app — Today (current news and features), For You (algorithmic recommendations), Play (Wordle, Crossword, etc.), and Sections. I frequently use Today, Play, and Sections; I never use For You.
What I’d rather see in place of For You is a feed of posts from Times reporters, stories from reporters I follow, and news updates on big stories, i.e., the news part of Twitter without all the agro, reply-guy, rage-machine parts of Twitter.
5. Launch the Audio App Already
The Times started developing an Audio app in 2021 as a home for its original podcasts, narrated versions of stories from the Times Magazine, and assorted other audio. The Audio app was essentially finished in mid-2022 — I know; I tested it for two months — but it still hasn’t launched.
I hope the Times hasn’t scrapped Audio as an over-stretch of the news brand or an adoption hill too steep to climb. My use of the Audio app beta peaked and waned after the first three or four weeks because the stuff I listened to the most like The Daily and The Ezra Klein Show were available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, but I would have stayed for exclusive content.
The Times Audio app would not replace Spotify or Audible for most NYTimes subscribers, but it would keep many — some? — users engaged and subscribed, which was the point of bringing Wordle and The Athletic into the subscription. Would a dedicated 🎧 button on the bottom-nav of the NYTimes app be more effective? I don’t know; maybe.