NEW YORK, Aug 4 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The New York Times’ (NYT.N) epic 2020 was always going to be hard to beat . The newspaper’s second-quarter results on Wednesday showed the slowest digital subscription growth in three years read more , with only 142,000 paying customers added. That’s a far cry from the record numbers who signed up last year thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to win a second term in the White House and Covid-19 coverage. Yet there was enough good news to drive shares up 10%. Take advertising, normally a dismal affair for newspapers. Digital advertising jumped 80% from a year earlier while print ad revenue rose 40%. In total, the Times made $113 million from ad sales. True, 2020 was a low point when brands halted spending. But digital ad revenue was up more than a fifth compared with the second quarter of 2019. Courting Madison Avenue is helping the Times cope with the Trump slump. (By Jennifer Saba) On Twitter http://twitter.com/breakingviews Capital Calls - More concise insights on global finance: Frontier tech investors are on their own read more Hugo Boss needs stronger legs to win fashion race read more SoftBank’s pharma AI bet has long odds read more Sony plays a more strategic content game read more Del Monte’s iced IPO awaits more fruitful market read more