The New York Times used to crow about the performance of its About unit, which it bought for $410 million in 2005. Not so much anymore. PaidContent has the news that About is reorganizing its operations. Business Insider claimed it is laying off its editorial team, which is apparently not the case. NYT brought in executive Martin Niesenholtz to run About, which is now regularly tagged as “troubled,” replacing Cella Irvine. The downfall of About was speeded by Google’s Panda algorithm update that hit so-called content farms hard. It’s hard to see a future where the NYT is able to turn around About, considering it is a legacy business built on search optimization at a time when Google is hellbent of fighting the spam that clogs its results.
More in Media
Here are the biggest moments in AI for publishers in 2025
Here are some of the moments that defined how publishers adapted to the AI era this year.
Digiday+ Research roundup: Gen Z news consumption and diversification in the DSP space were 2025’s top trends
As 2025 winds down, we rounded up the biggest trends of the year, based on the data that resonated the most with Digiday’s readers.
What publishers are wishing for this holiday season: End AI scraping and determine AI-powered audience value
Publishers want a fair, structured, regulated AI environment and they also want to define what the next decade of audience metrics looks like.