Vinit Bharara’s Some Spider Begins to Weave Its Web

Several months ago, Vinit Bharara, founder of the digital media publisher Some Spider, bought the pre-K-oriented website Scary Mommy (“A parenting website for imperfect parents”) as a base for serial niche-site reproduction. The mommy site, which was founded by Jill Smokler, has already ...

Read More

Times C.T.O. Rajiv Pant Leaves to Join Start-Up Some Spider

In a move that presages more changes within the New York Times’ technology and product teams, chief technology officer Rajiv Pant will leave to take a job at a New York-based start-up, I’ve learned. (Addition: That start-up is Some Spider, headed by former NYT paywall executive Paul Smurl) ...

Read More

The Newsonomics of the New York Times’ Paywalls 2.0

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Listen to Mark Thompson and you hear echoes of early 2011. “We have the theory. We’ve done the research. We’ve done the modeling,” the New York Times Co. CEO told me last week. “Then there’s ...

Read More

At Almost 400,000 Digital Subscribers, Inside the New York Times Pay Strategy, Year 2

Takeaways: It's 12% of the the New York Times overall circulation revenue for the year. That puts the annual circulation number in positive territory -- up 3% for the year, and a lively 8% for the fourth quarter -- reversing the 2010 trend. It's $100 million less (about 186 M for New York ...

Read More