Can Journalism Survive AI? — with NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien

What It Covers

NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien speaks with Scott Galloway about how The New York Times reached 13 million subscribers and nearly $3 billion in revenue, while navigating AI copyright battles, press freedom threats under the current administration, and a multi-product growth strategy spanning news, sports, games, and video.

Key Questions Answered

• •Subscription diversification: The New York Times generates 75% of revenue from subscriptions, with 13 million subscribers across news, The Athletic (500+ sports journalists), 11 games played by tens of millions daily, Wirecutter, and 25,000 tested recipes on Cooking. Each product line retains independent growth runway, reducing reliance on any single content category.
• •AI licensing strategy: Rather than choosing between litigation and partnership, the Times pursues both simultaneously. Lawsuits against AI companies enforce copyright over a large, long-standing archive of intellectual property, while deals like the Amazon partnership establish fair-value exchanges. The argument: LLMs require high-quality training data and should pay market rates for it.
• •Newsroom investment as competitive moat: The Times now operates its largest newsroom in company history at 2,300 editorial staff, with 3,000 total content creators including The Athletic and Wirecutter. Sustained, deliberate investment in original journalism over multiple decades — not cost-cutting — is identified as the primary differentiator from struggling legacy competitors like The Washington Post.
• •Video as the next growth vector: The Times is actively repositioning across its entire product portfolio — news, sports, games, cooking — toward video and multimodal formats. Levien frames this as becoming as preferred a destination for watching content as the Times currently is for reading and listening, treating video expansion as the single largest near-term growth lever.
• •Press freedom costs are rising: The Times has more lawyers today than at any point in its history, driven by AI copyright enforcement and increased legal scrutiny around reporting. Deploying journalists to conflict zones like Ukraine requires security experts, translators, and logistics teams. Legal and safety infrastructure now represents a significant and growing operational expense line.