As the loss-making Washington Post announced major layoffs this week – five major US news businesses posted earnings updates which suggested their industry is far from in decline.
The New York Times, People Inc, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters all saw full-year revenue growth in 2025. And News Corp reported growth for the first six months of its financial year (which starts in July).
Publishers are facing tough competition in the advertising market from Google owner Alphabet which reported crossing $400bn in revenue for the first time in 2025 this week with search revenue up 17%. Publishers have complained bitterly over the use of their content without payment in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. At least five publishers have sued Google over what they described as its “deceptive and manipulative” adtech practices.
But subscriptions growth and reader revenue are helping these businesses to grow despite online advertising challenges.
People Inc records strongest digital growth in five quarters despite Google AI hit to sessions
People Inc (formerly Dotdash Meredith) reported its strongest digital revenue growth in five quarters in Q4, rising 14% to $355m. Across the whole of 2025 digital revenue was up 10% to $1.1bn.
The publisher of brands including People, Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, Better Homes & Gardens and Investopedia said it expected “mid-to-high single digit” growth in digital revenue and digital adjusted EBITDA in 2026.
IAC chairman Barry Diller said: “The fourth quarter capped a year of disciplined execution and solid performance across IAC. People Inc drove the fastest digital revenue growth we’ve seen in over a year, even amidst AI-driven disruption.”
People Inc reported digital advertising 9%, performance marketing (largely affiliate) up 17% and licensing (including Apple News+ and a new AI partnership with Meta) and other categories up 46%.
Programming advertising revenue fell driven by a 13% drop in core website sessions (unique visits to 19 brands deemed most significant by People Inc) “due primarily to the impact of the growing prominence of Google AI Overviews on Google search sessions”.
But premium advertising revenue, especially in the health and pharmaceuticals, finance and media and entertainment categories, was up. People Inc’s in-house advertising tool D/Cipher, which targets advertising based on content and is said by the company to be far more effective than tracking cookies, also made an increased contribution.
Print revenue was down 23% year on year driven in part by the fact Q4 2024 benefited from political advertising around the US presidential election, as well as title closures and the continued migration of ad spend towards digital.
Revenue at People Inc parent IAC was down 8.7% to $2.4bn in 2025 as Ask Media Group (which owns search and content brands like Ask and Consumer Search) and caregiving matchmaker platform Care.com both saw revenue declines.
Google was blamed for Ask Media Group’s 71% drop in Q4, with IAC citing: “frequent Google algorithm changes and policy updates, resulting in a reduction in marketing through affiliate channels, which drove fewer visitors to our ad-supported search and content websites.”
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Bloomberg tops 700,000 paying subscribers
Bloomberg Media, a private company in the US, does not publish exact financial figures but said this week its revenue grew by 6% in 2025. The biggest growth area was live event sponsorships, up 30%, followed by subscriptions, up 10%.
Digital display advertising was described as “close to flat” while video advertising across linear, digital and streaming was up 1% and audio was up 16% (driven by 36% growth in podcasts). The advertising business was said to have an 82% client retention rate.
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Bloomberg Media, which is separate from the Bloomberg Terminals newswire business, reported it has now surpassed 707,000 paying subscribers, up from 660,000 six months ago. Double-digit growth was said to have come from “improvements in pricing and retention”.
Chief executive Karen Saltser said: “The big investment we made beginning in the summer of 2024 – focused on the pillars of editorial, product & engineering and sales & marketing – has built a base that is more loyal, active and valuable over time.
“It’s also been just over a year since we shifted toward more subscriber-only newsletters, and monthly newsletter users have grown 20% YoY.
Saltser said the overall mix “reflects a diversified revenue model where each business reinforces the others – and where we stay focused on what differentiates Bloomberg Media, rather than chasing others’ strategies or trends”.
She added: “Given the variability we saw quarter to quarter earlier in the year, this is an important signal heading into FY26 – and a direct result of our continued international investment in sales, editorial, production and events.”
Live events that contributed to the boom in that area included the three-day New Economy Forum in Singapore, Bloomberg House Davos, Tech SF, Screentime (covering the entertainment industry) in Los Angeles, and the Qatar Economic Forum.
Bloomberg this week launched a single destination for all of its live and on-demand video content, currently on its website and app and coming to streaming platforms later this year.
For the first time some Bloomberg video content will be available only to paying subscribers.
Deputy head of media editorial Kristin Powers, who oversees video, said: “We’re positioning video as a premium platform and expanding how we tell the most important stories from our global newsroom.”
It comes after Bloomberg said its total hours watched grew 25% year on year in 2025 with an average monthly video audience above 55 million.
New York Times: We ‘continue to thoughtfully invest’ as others do less
New York Times subscription revenues were up 9% in 2025 (digital-only growth of 14% and print subscription drop of 3%) and advertising grew by 12% (digital up 20%, print down 5%).
On the same day that The Washington Post cut more than 300 journalists, chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien noted that the publisher has continued to invest while others have pulled back.
She told investors: “Providing independent, human-made journalism and lifestyle products that resonate with huge audiences around the world is not easy. While others have been doing less of it, we continue to thoughtfully invest, making what we do more rare and more valuable to more people.”
Kopit Levien said The New York Times has “developed multiple digital revenue streams to monetise consistently high engagement”.
The title added 1.4 million digital subscribers over the year to reach a total subscriber count of 12.78 million. The biggest chunk is bundle/multi-product subscribers (6.48 million) meaning people who receive at least two out of News, The Athletic, Audio, Cooking, Games or Wirecutter. But second is the category of people receiving any of the non-news subscriptions (including The Athletic) on 4.27 million).
News-only subscriptions have been decreasing as the publisher seeks to encourage people onto the bundle, and as a result they were down 24% in a year.
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Average digital-only revenue per user (ARPU) was up 0.7% to $9.72 due to subscribers transitioning to higher prices. But the single-product non-news subscribers have a lower ARPU of $3.36 in Q4, versus $13.33 on the news-only subscription and $12.92 on the bundle/at least two products.
Advertising “beat our expectations”, Kopit Levien said, and also saw growth of 16%, with digital revenue up 25% “primarily due to strong marketer demand and new advertising supply”.
Overall revenue at The New York Times was up by about 9% in the year and more than $2bn in total digital revenue was generated for the first time.
Chief financial officer Will Bardeen told investors adjusted operating costs are expected to rise by 8-9% in Q1 due to investment being put into video. He said: “We are confident in our ability to generate strong returns as we grow the amount and impact of video journalism in news and across the portfolio.”
Kopit Levien described video as “a major new audience opportunity for us. As linear TV continues to decline and viewing habits shift even more to digital platforms, we see a long-term opportunity to establish The Times as a preferred brand for watching news, in addition to reading and listening.”
News Corp: Dow Jones is standout again
Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones continues to the the standout growth area at News Corp, with 7% growth in the six months to 31 December 2025 to revenue of $1.2bn. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment was up 10% to $335m and its EBITDA margin was a record at almost 30%.
Dow Jones reported record digital advertising revenue (up 12%) as well as a 7% increase in print advertising in Q2 (the three months to 31 December). Digital advertising now makes up 65% of total advertising revenue, up from 64% a year earlier.
Circulation and subscriptions revenue increased by 8%, with digital making up 76% compared to 73% a year earlier.
The Wall Street Journal now has 4.29 million digital-only subscriptions and 4.68 million in total. Barron’s Group has 1.42 million digital-only subs and 1.51 million in total.
News Corp’s ‘News Media’ segment, which includes The Sun and The Times in the UK, New York Post, and news titles in Australia, was steady with no revenue change in H1 or Q2.
News media did see an adjusted EBITDA drop of 5% to $70m in Q2 (in part due to “modest investment” in the launch of the California Post) but for the half year it was up 9% to $100m.
Circulation and subscription revenue was up 4%, partly due to increased cover prices and subscription pricing in the UK and Australia.
But advertising was down 6% primarily blamed on print.
Digital now makes up 43% of news media revenue, up from 39% in the last three months of 2024.
Digital subscribers to The Times and Sunday Times, including the Times Literary Supplement, were 659,000 at the end of the year (up 7% year on year). News Corp Australia’s news mastheads had 999,000 (up 2%).
News Corp figures indicated that traffic has begun to stabilise after steep falls at The Sun and The New York Post, at 70 million global monthly unique users in December (flat year on year) and 85 million (down 6%) respectively.
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News Corp overall saw 4% revenue growth in the six months to 31 December (to $4.5bn) with EBITDA up 7% to $861m.
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson highlighted the importance of IP owned by publishers like his: It is clear that expectations of AI’s impact are continuing to evolve and that the more perceptive players have come to realise that provenance is paramount. What is the point of acquiring cutting-edge semiconductors if they are being deployed to repurpose gormless, factless, feckless content sets?
“We do believe an increasing number of insightful companies understand this content contradiction and will indeed pay a premium for our premium content. This quarter we expanded our partnership with Bloomberg to include AI rights for our unique Dow Jones content and are progressing with other negotiations.”
News Corp has previously signed a deal with OpenAI and is suing Perplexity.
Reuters benefits from generative AI deals
Revenue at the Reuters news agency grew by 3% to $853m in 2025.
The company said revenue growth of 6% in Q4 was “primarily due to higher generative AI related transactional content licensing revenue in the Agency business, as well as a contractual price increase from the company’s news agreement with the Data & Analytics business of London Stock Exchange Group”.
Parent company Thomson Reuters (which makes most of its money from selling business information) reported total revenue up 3% to $7.5bn in 2025. Its “Big Three” segments are Legal Professionals, Corporates and Tax, and Audit & Accounting Professionals.
The post Amid WaPo woes five US news giants show how industry can grow appeared first on Press Gazette.
