The New York Times reported its financial results for the third quarter that reflected much lower earnings than expected, particularly in their print advertising segment. The NY Times recently reported a net loss of $4.3 million. The sales of print advertisement experienced a great loss of 6 percent and fell down to around $209 million. On the contrary, digital advertisement sales went up by 15 percent and raised the respective revenues to $78.3 million.

Undoubtedly, the percentage of loss is much better than that of last year, which was $35.6 million. The company expects the numbers to improve modestly, but did not provide any details about their goals. Unlike print segment, the digital advertisement segment reflected better gains and managed to meet expectations. It is because of the efforts that New York Times has put into online and mobile content, especially around the iPad. Moreover, their online network is far-reaching and that is why it has turned around with better results.

“While digital ad sales, including results from About.com, jumped 15 percent to $78.3 million, print sales slipped almost 6 to roughly $209 million. Circulation revenue, which accounts for subscription fees and newsstand sales, fell 5 percent to $229.1 million.

In a statement, Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson offered an update on the company’s progress developing a system to charge readers for full access to the flagship newspaper’s website; one of the digital initiatives it hopes will start to pay off in extra online revenue.”

The good growth of online network is a good sign for The New York Times, but still a lot needs to be done in order to monitor and monetize digital content. For this, they have decided to charge a monthly fee from the readers to view their articles, most probably from the coming year. This shift towards digital media monetization, and even the paywall is methodology a number of media companies are taking.  The New York Times has been doing a great deal of testing for digital content distribution, the latest being an updated mobile app.