• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, November 7, 2014

The New York Times is looking to expand its distribution and reach more young readers through a new group digital subscription offering for schools around the world, called In-School Access. The subscription gives full access to the NYTWeb site to any device within a subscribing institution’s IP range, meaning it will be available to all students or teachers using school WiFi on their mobile devices or logging into a school desktop or laptop.

Yasmin Namini, senior vice president and chief consumer officer for The New York Times, stated: “With this new in-school offering available at affordable rates, schools can access even more news, opinion and analysis from The New York Times on any device, in addition to the award-winning video, photography and infographics only available on NYTimes.com.” According to the publisher, the In-School Access offering is structured to protect student and teacher privacy.

The In-School Access subscriptions are available only to K-12 institutions. Other kinds of group subscriptions, including one option offering off-site access, are available to colleges and universities as well.

The New York Times Company is making a big effort to boost digital subscription sales with new kinds of products, including NYT Now, a new app that costs $8 for four weeks of access and gives subscribers access to the most important NYT content, including videos, infographics and slide shows, as well as content from around the Web.

Digital subscriptions have been contributing a larger share of the company’s overall business as print advertising continues to decline. In the most recent quarter the company said circulation revenues rose 1.3% from $204.2 million to $206.7 million, due mostly to The New York Times’ digital subscription sales, which rose 13.3% to $42.8 million over the same period.

The total number of digital subscribers increased 5.3% from 831,000 at the end of the second quarter to 875,000 at the end of the third quarter, the company said. The latter figure represents a more than 20% increase compared to the end of the third quarter of 2013.