But those gains were not substantial enough to offset a continuing, industrywide decline in print advertising, historically the main revenue source for newspaper companies. Print advertising at The Times fell 18 percent in the most recent quarter, causing an overall decline in advertising revenue of 7 percent.

The company has increasingly relied on subscription revenue, which spiked amid Americans’ close attention to the presidential election last year and the start of President Trump’s term. The Times registered a net gain of 308,000 digital-only subscriptions in the most recent quarter, the largest number for any quarter in its history. The surge fed an 11 percent increase in circulation revenue.

It was the second straight quarter of record-breaking subscriber growth, with 276,000 new digital-only subscriptions — more than the total for 2013 and 2014 combined — being added in the last three months of 2016. The Times now has more than 2.2 million digital-only subscriptions.

The public editor position was created in 2003 to rebuild trust among readers after the scandal involving Jayson Blair, a Times reporter who was found to have fabricated sources and plagiarized repeatedly.

Ms. Spayd, who was the sixth person to hold the position, declined to comment when reached late Wednesday but told The Columbia Journalism Review in an email: “The Times is reimagining itself in all sorts of ways, and the decision to eliminate the public editor’s role is just one part of that. I’m honored to have been among the six who’ve sat in this chair, and to be among those who tried to keep a great institution great, even as it made the inevitable stumbles.”

Just a few national news organizations, including NPR and ESPN, still have a public editor or a similar position. The Washington Post eliminated its ombudsman in 2013.

Mr. Sulzberger, in a newsroom memo, said the public editor’s role had become outdated.

“Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.”

