New York Times Co. Citi’s 2026 Global TMT Conference
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Welcome, everyone. We're super excited to have Will Bardeen, CFO of The New York Times, with us this morning. Will, thank you so much for coming.
Thanks, Jason. Great to be here.
I want to kick off, I really like your origin story. Maybe I have this wrong, but I think before you became the CFO, you were integral in designing the firm's digital strategy.
Is that fair? Yes, I think that is fair.
I've been in the CFO seat for three years, but had begun as the head of strategy all the way back in 2010.
2010. Yeah. And I think your story is interesting just because I can't think of many companies that have been as successful in this digital pivot as you have been, so I give you a lot of credit for being the sort of architect of this.
But my question is, as you've watched this strategy unspool over, what are we now, did you say 2010?
Yeah. So, part of the leadership team over the last, say, 15 years, I think at this stage, fair to say, The New York Times has transformed into a digitally native company that's- Yeah innovating rapidly.
Yeah. Right. So what lessons have you learned?
If I went back and broke into your offices and rifled through your files to see what you said then, what you're doing now, what things have changed? What's exactly the same? Yeah.
That is a great question. I might highlight a few things that were really effective over this period for The Times. The first one, I would say, use the word differentiation. What I mean by that is, in the digital ecosystem, sort of awash in all sorts of content, really a relentless focus on differentiation is critical. What that has meant for The New York Times is continuous investment into original, independent, boots-on-the-ground journalism, actual reporters reporting last year from 150 countries around the world. We have continued to invest in that at a time when, honestly, most organizations have been doing the opposite. To sort of put some numbers on that, 10 years ago, we had about 1,000 people working in our newsrooms. Right now, it is about 3,000. So, continued investment. The second thing I would really highlight, maybe a little bit more from the digital product standpoint Yeah is habit, and the recognition of designing products around essential habits in people's daily lives.
Right. Recognizing that there are multiple habits that The Times can do better than anyone else.
We can focus sort of on surrounding curious audiences and a bunch of essential habits. What are those? Obviously, what should you know in the news every day, but also for sports fans, following your team. For home cooks, what are you cooking for dinner every night? Then for everyone now, young and old, how do you spend a little time having fun every day in a way that is actually healthy for your brain? So our puzzle games, which are going so well.
Yeah. That habit's really critical.
The last dynamic, which I don't think we say a digitally native company now, but in a transformation period, just the importance of technology and building a scaled digital technology platform, and that means lots of engineers and data scientists.
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