One Way to Phase Out Newspapers: Make Them a Luxury Good

There will eventually come a day when The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. "Sometime in the future, date TBD," the paper's publisher said back in 2010. Overhead may be high and circulation may be lower, but rushing to eliminate the print edition of The New York Times would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.

Peretti says the Times shouldn't waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way. "Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition would make sense for them," he told me, "but if you discontinue it, you're going to have your most loyal customers really upset with you." "It's a really hard thing to do and it's a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn't have a legacy business," Peretti told me. "But we're going to have questions like that where we have things we're doing that don't make sense when the market changes and the world changes. In those situations, it's better to be more aggressive than less aggressive."