Boston.com Sponsors "Paradise Found" Vacation Giveaways to Drive Signups for New Travel e-Mail; Winners May Choose From Trips to Tahiti, Italy, Australia, Alaska or Africa

Business Wire, Dec 18, 2002

Business Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2002

Boston.com, the most visited regional portal in the U.S., announced that it is awarding the last of three "Paradise Found" vacation giveaways (www.boston.com/paradisefound) on Friday, December 20, as part of a promotion for its new Boston Traveler e-mail newsletter.

A free e-mail service, Boston Traveler launches in January and will include exclusive travel offers from premium advertisers. The e-mail newsletter is available in HTML format and currently has more than 30,000 subscribers who have signed up in the last three weeks. Readers who sign up for the Boston Traveler e-mail by midnight on Thursday will be eligible for Friday's vacation giveaway, which includes six to eight nights' lodging and round-trip airfare for two.

"We are excited to expand Boston.com's e-mail newsletter portfolio with the new Boston Traveler, which will provide advertisers with a targeted product to reach our loyal, well-traveled Boston.com audience," said Lisa DeSisto, vice president and general manager of Boston.com. "Our users will benefit from the "insider deals" and offers from our local, national and international advertisers."

To promote the trip giveaways, Boston.com is running an Eyeblaster rich-media ad on its homepage throughout the week. The ad can be viewed at http://www.boston.com/mediakit/what_was_that.shtml and includes animated characters that represent each of the vacation destinations. Eyeblaster ads are one of many online innovations that Boston.com has adopted, in addition to Shoshkele ads and Surround Sessions.

In October 2003, Boston.com achieved a record traffic month with 111.4 million page views, a 6.3% increase from September's 104.8 million.

About Boston.com

Boston.com is one of the most visited regional portals in the U.S. and is part of New York Times Digital, the digital business unit of The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT). The mission of NYTD, which also comprises market leader NYTimes.com and an archive distribution business, is to provide a high-quality, worldwide online audience with trusted editorial content from The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

This press release may be found at www.nytdigital.com