The media landscape has experienced a seismic shift driven by rapid technological advancements and changing consumer behaviors. Traditional media now faces increasing competition from digital platforms (Arab News, 2021). As Mandenaki et al. (2023) describe, the media industry struggles to avoid "Digital Darwinism" as digitalization reshapes news gathering, production, and distribution processes.
As The New York Times' former CEO Mark Thompson noted, "The psychology inside the Times and other newspapers was that all you had to do was get a bigger audience and transfer the wonderful economics of print advertising to digital. I didn't buy that... It had to be subscriptions" (McKinsey & Company, 2020). This insight proved transformative, as The New York Times now generates 68% of its $2.4 billion revenue from subscriptions, with digital subscriptions accounting for $1.1 billion of the $1.65 billion total subscription revenue in 2023 (Cuofano, 2024).