The July numbers are in for the New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) and it’s a better story than the month before with a lower overall ad revenue drop year to year—3.5 percent compared with 5.5 percent—and a slight revenue increase of 0.1 percent compared with a decrease of 3.6 percent. But internet ad growth for the News Media group was down sequentially—19.3 percent for July compared with 22 percent in June. In comparison, in July ‘06, internet ad revenue was up 27.5 percent. Company execs warned ealier this year that growth in online advertising was slowing. Release.

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TimesSelect: The debate continues over the real value of premium versus ad-supported ... Meanwhile, the release included specific numbers for TimesSelect subs instead of the usual total with percentages. 771,400 total: 462,800 home-delivered; 225,100 online-only; 83,500 free (college students and educators)—up from 224,580 online-only subs in June. By comparison, when we wrote about this last July, TimesSelect subs totaled 531,000 subscribers; of that, about 198,000 were paying. The academic half-price offer accounted for less than 2 percent of the paying group back then.