On the latest episode of The Drum Podcast, New York Times advertising chief Tusar Barik explains how the Times has quietly reinvented itself – from Wordle and Games to subscriptions, video and AI – and what that transformation signals for the future of news media heading into 2026.
For an industry obsessed with reinvention, Tusar Barik’s career move still raises eyebrows. After more than eight years at LinkedIn, he joined the New York Times earlier this year – a 175-year-old institution often miscast as a legacy brand fighting for relevance.
Barik doesn’t see it that way, as he made clear when he appeared on The Drum Podcast. “People think they know the New York Times,” he said. “But when you really look under the hood, you realise just how expansive the opportunity is. We’re in a category of one.”
Barik now leads marketing for the Times’ advertising business, overseeing product marketing, insights, events and industry engagement. His job is not to modernise journalism – that work was done long before he arrived – but to help the market understand what the Times has quietly become.
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At its core, the New York Times still sees itself as a newsroom. Internally, Barik describes it as a solar system, with journalism at the centre. “News is the sun,” he explains. “But there are a lot of other things orbiting it now.” Those orbits include Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic – products that collectively reach between 50 and 100 million people every week, supported by more than 12 million subscribers and 150 million registered users.
What’s striking is not the scale, but the regularity. “Everyone I speak to tells me about their personal relationship with the Times,” Barik says. “They don’t just say they read it. They say they play Wordle every morning, they cook from it, they listen to The Daily. It’s woven into their lives.” That shift – from destination to daily habit – is what underpins the Times’ resilience at a moment when much of the news industry is under severe pressure.
The most misunderstood part of that transformation is gaming. Wordle, in particular, has become shorthand for the Times’ evolution. Barik laughs that it may be “the most valuable acquisition anyone’s ever made,” but the deeper story is more strategic than viral.
“Games aren’t new for us,” he says. “The first crossword ran during World War II. The world was a frightening place and people needed something grounding.” That logic still applies. Games provide routine, emotional relief and connection – something Barik sees as complementary to hard news rather than a distraction from it.
“You might read something incredibly serious and then play a game to decompress. That range is what we offer.” From a business perspective, games have also become one of the most effective environments in the Times’ advertising portfolio. “We’ve built video units that appear just before you play,” Barik explains. “They’re not intrusive, they perform exceptionally well, and the audience is huge and deeply engaged.” Gaming, in other words, didn’t dilute the Times’ brand. It strengthened it.
Unlike many publishers, the Times has resisted the temptation to chase advertising yield at the expense of the user experience. “The consumer always comes first,” Barik says. “The reader, the player, the cooker. Advertising follows that.”
That philosophy underlies the Times’ essential subscription strategy – building direct relationships and long-term trust before monetization. It’s also why advertising remains deliberately restrained. “No one objects to advertising,” Barik says. “What people object to is intrusiveness.” The result is a premium environment that performs precisely because it doesn’t behave like an attention factory – a point increasingly recognised by advertisers under pressure to prove effectiveness, not just reach.
Barik is careful not to frame the New York Times as being in competition with big tech platforms. Instead, he positions it somewhere between the two. “We’re not trying to be all things to all people,” he says. “Everything we do has to be authentic to who we are.” That includes how the Times approaches AI. Its BrandMatch tool utilizes machine learning to align advertiser briefs with relevant editorial contexts in real-time, while new licensing deals – including with Amazon – enable Times content to surface on AI-powered platforms with attribution and links back. “We want to meet people where they are. But we’re not giving our journalism away.”
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As the industry looks toward 2026 and beyond, Barik believes the future of news media will favour fewer, stronger relationships over endless scale. It will reward brands that become genuinely useful. It will blend formats – text, video, audio and games – without losing editorial clarity. And it will treat AI as an assistive layer, not a replacement for journalism.
“We’re still at the beginning,” Barik says. “But we’re defining what it means to sit between a traditional publisher and a platform.” For an industry still searching for a sustainable model, the New York Times’ transformation suggests the answer isn’t louder distribution – it’s deeper integration into everyday life.
Listen to the full conversation
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