NYT as a business

The American Thinker ^ | Jan. 7, 2004 | Thomas Lifson

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Business Week Magazine has a cover story on the future of The New York Times. Coverage of the business strategy and economic prospects (not terribly encouraging) is pretty good. BW is rather sympathetic and admiring of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper's hereditary publisher, and does not even mention his widely-used nickname "Pinch" - probably an effort to protect his dignity.

BW is nearly as leftist in its editorial stance as the Times itself, so the role of the NYT's extreme ideological bias is downplayed. Here is what BW has to say on the topic.

The growing polarization of the body politic along ideological lines also is hurting the Times and its big-media brethren. One of the few things on which Bush and Kerry supporters agreed during the Presidential campaign was that the press was unfair in its coverage of their candidate. Keller says the Times was deluged with "ferocious letters berating us for either being stooges of the Bush Administration or agents of Michael Moore." Complaints from the Right were far more numerous, even before the newspaper painted a bull's-eye on itself in running a column by public editor Daniel Okrent headlined "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" Okrent's short answer: "Of course it is."

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Being liberal is bad for business. This is well worth reading.