Jay Hancock

Former reporter pursuing the past. Writing book on language history. Substack on history, economics, stuff. 2020 Pulitzer finalist for investigative journalism.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

Scoop from me in science history. Newly found letters reveal ugly details in Nobelists' campaign to rob Rosalind Franklin of credit for helping find DNA structure. https://t.co/SVm3kkCiqi

[Richard N. Haass @RichardHaass]

The Shangri La speech by @SecWar, in which he discusses every US ally & partner in the Indo-Pacific except Taiwan, echoes Dean Acheson's ill-fated 1950 address to the National Press Club in which he left South Korea outside the US defense perimeter. We know how that played out.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

Social media is mostly horrible but on a very good day it can still do this. Read the replies.

[SharrellAnne @SharrellAnne2]

This is probably a long shot, but if anybody happens to be in DC this weekend and plans on visiting Arlington, I would love to see a fresh photo of my husband’s grave in Section 60.

SSG Alan W. Shaw
Section 60, Grave 8451
B Co 1/12 Cav, 1st Cavalry Division
November 10, 1975 - February 9, 2007

There’s just something about knowing people still stop by, still say his name, still remember. 🇺🇸⭐🇺🇸

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

It's @EugeneSteuerle noting something that Wall St seems clueless about: "the real rate of return on inflation-indexed bonds is nearly as high as the earnings-to-price level of stocks." Attn @TipsWatch. https://t.co/xCBZGXr1rm

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

My evolution on term limits...
Knew little about politics: I supported them.

Read the skeptical academic research: became neutral.

Saw the crushing pressure electeds face from party leadership, donors, activists and influencers in modern political era: now the biggest advocate.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

@davidu In the good old days -- 1980s -- you could buy American Express travelers checks with a card, book the card miles/ points & then deposit the checks in yr account & pay the balance.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

@AgustinLebron3 Good to see @tylercowen linking. Libertarians understand incentives!

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

Lol @claudeai is annoyed with me.

"The search results we already have actually answer this"

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

@farhip Keep up the good work! I have admired it for a long time.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

@farhip seems super murky but the answer in many cases might be "no" CRS put out this piece last week. mainly about Kalshi & Polymarket but see section on CFTC Rule 180.1 & how limited CFTC is overall. https://t.co/bZK4tq7fk6

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

Photography is art mediated/ assisted by technology. So why aren't AI novels art?

[Acyn @Acyn]

Gomez: You said the only person who determine if it’s an imminent threat is the president. Do you stand by that statement?

Gabbard: I do

Gomez: Director Ratcliffe, do you agree with that?

Ratcliffe: The president makes that decision

Gomez: Why do you guys even have jobs?

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Tyler Cowen is excellent. If you sit around dissing Tyler Cowen, you have nothing useful to do, and AI is gonna take your job.

[Cardiff Garcia @CardiffGarcia]

That guy criticizing @tylercowen was like when Tarantino trashed Paul Dano only for legions of defenders to emerge and say nice things (deserved in both cases). Started ugly and ended up being kind of heartwarming.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

just when you started to worry that Twitter insult innovation was stagnating

[Clara Baines @clar91393]

@michaelgove Who gives a toss what you think you ruinous Brexiteer lummox.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

@tonyaajw @aakashgupta My 90-year old mother in law was paying ~$900 a year for the Philadelphia Inquirer just for the crossword.

[michael hill @amhill]

I have rarely read anything as puerile as @Arightside’s interview with @RFKJr_Official in today’s @baltimoresun. Let’s RFK brag on cleaning up the Hudson without asking about Trump doing away with all pollution restrictions. Just pitiful. Totally ruining a once great newspaper.

[Jay Hancock @jayhancock1]

This has been going on for 50+ years. Already in the 1970s hard news was not self-financing. So NYT bosses added popular fluff & ad bait. Home section. Weekend. Living (food & cooking) etc. Soft stuff financed real news. Same now.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The New York Times made news the loss leader for a $2 billion digital revenue machine, and this chart is the receipt.

News-only subscribers dropped 65% since June 2022. Bundle subscribers grew 227%. That looks like a news collapse. But the NYT deliberately killed its standalone news product. They stopped marketing it. They made it nearly impossible to buy a news-only subscription on their website. They priced the full bundle (News + Games + Cooking + Athletic + Wirecutter) at $2/month introductory, cheaper than a standalone Games subscription.

News-only ARPU is $13.33. Bundle ARPU is $12.92. Single non-news product ARPU is $3.36. Those 4.3 million single-product subscribers paying $3.36/month? They’re not the business. They’re the funnel. The NYT CEO said it explicitly on the earnings call: single products are “funnels to get people to subscribe” to the bundle.

Games now accounts for over 50% of time spent inside the NYT app. Wordle, Connections, and the Mini pull 10+ million weekly players who never intended to read a news article. But half of all NYT subscribers now pay for the bundle, and bundle subscribers retain longer, engage more, and accept price increases. The bundle just went from $25 to $30/month.

The result: digital revenue crossed $2 billion for the first time in 2025. Free cash flow hit $550 million. Adjusted operating margins reached 24% in Q4. Berkshire Hathaway just took a billion-dollar position. While the Washington Post cut 300 journalists last week, the Times added 1.4 million subscribers.

This chart shows a news company that built an attention ecosystem where Wordle gets you in the door, Cooking keeps you at breakfast, The Athletic owns your commute, and by the time you think about canceling, you’d lose four products instead of one.

The NYT figured out that the way to fund journalism in 2026 is to make sure you can’t quit the crossword.