By Sara Guaglione<\/a><\/span> \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 September 26, 2025<\/span> \u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n Ivy Liu <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The New York Times\u2019 Cooking vertical has debuted a new baking video series and newsletter franchise led by Cooking writer Vaughn Vreeland, making the featured recipes free to access as part of a push to attract younger audiences into its subscription funnel.<\/p>\n Although the Times plans to monetize the videos and newsletters with ads (there isn\u2019t a launch sponsor), the tactic is ultimately part of the Times\u2019 subscriber acquisition strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Times has long experimented with loosening its paywall around certain news events \u2013 like its COVID-19 coverage in March 2020<\/a> and presidential elections. Now it\u2019s applying that same playbook to Cooking, aiming to use recipes and food content more strategically as a subscription driver for new and younger audiences.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a new audience play,\u201d said Camilla Velasquez, gm of NYT Cooking. \u201cThere is such a big audience out there for baking that maybe don\u2019t know us yet. And we really want to get them \u2026 We\u2019ve really tried to open our access model to allow people to try things a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n Vreeland\u2019s series \u201cBake Time,\u201d which launched on Sept. 25, is also part of the Times\u2019 broader move into more personality-led video<\/a>, where the publisher increasingly builds franchises around individual talent. That\u2019s a strategy Cooking has pushed more aggressively in the past 18 months<\/a>, Velasquez noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Publishers from The Washington Post to the Guardian and News Corp are experimenting with formats anchored by recognizable personalities, in part to compete with creators and influencers who dominate younger audiences\u2019 attention.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n For many publishers, leaning into video and creator-style franchises is a hedge against declining referral traffic, particularly as Google AI Overviews threatens to siphon off casual readers. The Times is less vulnerable than most thanks to its subscription base, but Cooking remains a key funnel product. (The Times doesn\u2019t break out the number of Cooking subscribers from its total digital subscriber base of 11.88 million. Cooking has more than 1 million Youtube subscribers.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Free recipes and personality-driven video around writers like Vreeland are designed to keep new audiences flowing into that subscription pipeline, making the strategy as much defensive as it is growth-driven.\u00a0<\/p>\n The strategy also doubles as a hedge against the threat of AI: if fewer readers end up on publisher homepages, putting recognizable names and faces on external platforms helps extend brand recognition and trust \u2014 at least in theory.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the Times is doing here serves as a good example of how legacy publishers can differentiate themselves in an increasingly AI-disrupted environment, particularly with content that is highly susceptible to disruption \u2013 like recipes,\u201d Melissa Chowning, founder and CEO of audience development and marketing firm Twenty-First Digital, said in an email. \u201cBy pairing a recipe with an engaging personality, they create an experience that is far more difficult for AI summaries to replicate.\u201d<\/p>\n Chowning said the strategy gives audiences more reason to engage directly with a title like The New York Times, as opposed to AI-generated recipes. Video content also \u201cenhances their potential for discovery on social media platforms,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n According to Steve Paine, marketing manager at SEO platform Sistrix, Google AI Overviews were triggered for about 11% of the keywords Cooking ranked for in Sistrix\u2019s dataset, which he noted was \u201caverage\u201d compared to other publishers.<\/p>\n \u201cVideo and imagery and human connection [are] becoming the language of the internet,\u201d Velasquez said.<\/p>\n In 2024, people watched over 4.3 million hours of NYT Cooking videos on YouTube, according to the Times. And 70% of subscribers return to the Cooking platform week over week. NYT Cooking has two other recipe-focused series, including \u201cThe Veggie\u201d and \u201cCooking 101.\u201d (Vreeland counts 86,000 followers on his own Instagram account.)<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s [a] new audience and younger audience where cooking weeknights for them is not something that fits into their schedule, but it could fit in on the weekend,\u201d Velasquez said.<\/p>\n Each monthly episode of \u201cBake Time\u201d will dive into the inspiration and development journey behind the featured baking recipe. Vreeland calls it his \u201cvideo diary.\u201d The newsletter will be published weekly, he said. Audience feedback will be a big part of both \u2013 Vreeland plans to include photos of viewers\u2019 bakes in his videos and newsletter, as well as tailor the theme of the newsletter around readers\u2019 recipe requests.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m humanizing the recipe,\u201d Vreeland said.<\/p>\n The videos will be distributed on the Times\u2019 own Cooking site and app, YouTube, and social platforms.<\/p>\n For all the momentum behind publishers chasing video, the bigger question is whether these efforts actually reach the audiences they\u2019re meant to \u2014 and whether they deliver for advertisers, noted Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst at consulting firm TVRev. He cautioned publishers like the Times from producing video that may be seen as \u201camateur\u201d alongside hard news reporting on a homepage.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of having video is a good one, and if they used these videos on TikTok or even YouTube it would work. Ditto encouraging the reporters to promote the videos on social. But context is everything,\u201d said Wolk. \u201cWhether it is effective or not is another story, but it\u2019s definitely a way to bring advertisers into a different part of the paper.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/digiday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/04\/cooking-content-digiday.png?w=1030&h=579&crop=1\")
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