Breaking Down the Cost to Print and Deliver the NYT

SAI crunched the Q3 2008 numbers for the New York Times and came up with some startling discoveries. Follow the jump for their breakdown. That’s some expensive fish wrap!

Not that it's anything we think the New York Times Company should do, but we thought it was worth pointing out that it costs the Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead.

His math is all f'ed up. It should cost $244 million for delivery costs, not $644 million. It costs $54 million MORE to send out a bunch of kindles than to print and deliver the paper.

Even if the numbers were correct, those people who get the newspaper do it for a reason. If the NYT were to stop sending out papers, just send out a free Kindle and have an online subscription I doubt many people would be happy.

The people that subscribe to the times aren't happy anyway, so what's the point.

Originally Posted by Prometheusg

His math is all f'ed up. It should cost $244 million for delivery costs, not $644 million. It costs $54 million MORE to send out a bunch of kindles than to print and deliver the paper.

According to the Times's Q308 10-Q, the company spends $63 million per quarter on raw materials and $148 million on wages and benefits. We've heard the wages and benefits for just the newsroom are about $200 million per year.

(63M+148M) x 4 = 844M - 200M (since that's a yearly salary) that's 644M

You can't light a fire with a kindle.

Originally Posted by EXreaction

Even if the numbers were correct, those people who get the newspaper do it for a reason. If the NYT were to stop sending out papers, just send out a free Kindle and have an online subscription I doubt many people would be happy.

No, but they could offer a Kindle with a 2 year subscription instead of 2 years of papers. I highly suspect the prices would be much lower if they were buying Kindles by the tens of thousands. Hell, they could even have a Kindle book store, they'd probably sell tons of books.

Originally Posted by Nemesis999

Hell, they could even have a Kindle book store, they'd probably sell tons of books.

What? The entire point of the Kindle is that it comes with the entire Amazon bookstore at your fingertips ready for digital purchase that is sent over the cell networks....

Originally Posted by kllrnohj

What? The entire point of the Kindle is that it comes with the entire Amazon bookstore at your fingertips ready for digital purchase that is sent over the cell networks....

You've never heard of affiliates? I can promise you, any businessman with a brain would get Amazon to give them some kind of commission or deep deep discounts if they were to give out Kindles in vast quantities.

Wow, a black and white device for $350?

Why would it matter that it looks like paper? Are people so hateful of new things that new things must look like old things?

I can view news as well as half a million other things on my Iphone IN COLOR and I paid less... SO um???

Originally Posted by Zellio2009

Wow, a black and white device for $350?

Why would it matter that it looks like paper? Are people so hateful of new things that new things must look like old things?

I can view news as well as half a million other things on my Iphone IN COLOR and I paid less... SO um???

The point is that e-ink that mimics paper is far easier on the eyes. The human eye isn't meant to look at an LCD screen for very long (especially not a small one), it causes eye strain. Also, e-ink uses no power (or damn near, at least) unless it is flipping pixels (so in the Kindle's case that would be every time you flip the page). Your iPhone also has a significantly smaller screen and in reality isn't less than a Kindle since you have to sign up for a 2 year subscription - you are only paying for part of it up front, the rest comes out of the subscription.

The only way I see us putting newspapers as the auxiliary source is when we perfect flexible screens and make them cheaply affordable to the masses.

And even then businesses and schools will still need to rely on newspaper for paper.