http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/business/new-york-times-co-reports-3Q-earnings.html 2014-10-30 14:17:07 New York Times Co. Reports a Quarterly Loss While revenue increased marginally, severance and product development costs resulted in a $9 million operating loss. === The New York Times Company The Times planned to spur revenue growth during 2014 with the introduction of several new digital subscription products, but those products have not caught on as the company had hoped. Total revenue during the third quarter increased 0.8 percent to $365 million, compared with $362 million in the same period last year. The company posted a third-quarter operating loss of $9 million, compared with an operating profit of $12.9 million in the same period of 2013. Investment in its new product initiatives, which include the mobile app NYT Now, contributed to the loss. But the main contributor to the quarterly loss was expenses associated with a round of buyouts and layoffs that were announced this month and will take effect by the end of the year, as the company plans to While the print business continued its steady decline with advertising revenue dropping 5.3 percent, the company showed growth in its digital business. Digital-only subscribers, a number closely watched by analysts, some of whom suspect that growth may soon plateau, increased by 44,000 during the quarter, the best quarterly digital subscriber growth in nearly two years. The Times now has 875,000 digital-only subscribers. Third-quarter digital advertising revenue was $38.2 million, a 16.5 percent increase compared with the third quarter of 2013. Mark Thompson, chief executive of the Times Company, said that the digital advertising growth came from a number of areas, including Paid Posts, the company’s push into so-called native advertising, in which ads resemble editorial content. “Our solid year-to-date digital advertising performance is the result of deliberate execution on our strategic plan," Mr. Thompson said in a news release on the earnings, citing native ads, investments in video and growth in the smartphone platform. He also emphasized that audience development, an effort to attract more readers to the company’s digital properties, remained “a top priority.” The company’s quarterly earnings report came days after Mr. Thompson and the newspaper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., announced the “Our business is changing at a faster pace than ever, and we believe it is critical to have specialized business leadership in the key areas of digital and marketing in much the same way that we have in advertising,” the two said in a memo to staff. Also this week, the executive editor of The Times, Dean Baquet, announced that as part of an effort to cut costs in the newsroom, the paper would cease publishing a stand-alone Autos section. Although the paper will continue to write about automobiles, he said that he and other executives concluded there was “no longer an economic reason for a separate section.”