The New York Times has announced that, as of today, it will no longer be distributing articles in the Apple News app, making it one of the largest publishers to end its association with Apple’s publishing platform.
“Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers, and the nature of our business rules,” Meredith Kopit Levien, The Times’ chief operating officer, wrote in a memo to employees. “Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.”
The Times is one of the first media organizations to leave Apple News, and it was never a part of Apple’s paid subscription service Apple News+, which had a hard time recruiting some of the larger publishers. But the tension between tech companies and news publishers is nothing new.
While Apple has had a tougher time getting publishers (including the Times) to sign on for its monthly News Plus subscription which costs $9.99 per month and offers access to a variety of magazines and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Wired, and more the free version of Apple News has offered a much larger array of news. While the Times only offered a few free articles to Apple News, its departure still makes it one of the biggest names to abandon Apple’s service.
