Sources: Apple tried hard to sign up The New York Times and WaPo to Apple News+, was flexible on some terms but wanted the papers' entire content offerings
Joe Pompeo / Vanity Fair :
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's courtship of The New York Times and The Washington Post is the endgame of a three-year build-out: the company started with a paywall system for the News app in 2016, bought Texture in 2018, and by that September was in talks with NYT, WaPo, and the Wall Street Journal about joining the magazine bundle it had just acquired.
By February 2019, Apple had signed many smaller publishers to the upcoming service on a 50% revenue split — terms Recode's sources flagged as unlikely to satisfy major newspapers. Today's Vanity Fair report explains the gap: Apple would flex on some deal points but insisted on the papers' entire content offerings, which is precisely the concession big dailies guard most closely.
First-order effects
- Apple heads into the News+ launch without its two marquee dailies, since the papers' entire-catalog demand collides with the 50% split already signed by smaller publishers.
- The New York Times and WaPo keep their direct subscription relationships and full pricing control — but forgo the distribution reach Apple is offering in exchange for the whole catalog.
Second-order effects
- The Wall Street Journal, the remaining big paper in the Texture talks, becomes the swing signal: signing would hand Apple the credibility to pressure other holdouts, while refusing validates the papers' leverage.
- The unresolved economics resurface a year later when a trade body representing NYT, WaPo, and WSJ formally asks Apple for improved App Store subscription terms — the bundle negotiation hardening into a collective-bargaining posture.
Third-order effects
- Apple's later move to force News+ readers into its own app rather than publisher sites — changes partner publications say they weren't told about (per Digiday's sources) — shows the structural risk of the whole-catalog model: the platform controls the interface, the reader data, and the terms, and can shift them unilaterally.
- If the pattern holds, premium news splits into two tiers: small publishers inside platform bundles on platform terms, and large dailies that can afford to stay out — with Apple's aggregator ambitions capped by exactly the publishers it most wants.
The trend: Apple is assembling a premium news bundle on its own terms, and the largest publishers' willingness to trade full-catalog control for platform distribution is the constraint that will define whether it becomes the industry's default storefront.