Posted on 04/27/2006 3:11:06 AM PDT by Liz
Facing shareholder dissent and getting flak for bloated executive pay deals, The New York Times is frantically searching for crisis p.r. experts as the company gears up for a public battle over the future of the newspaper giant.
Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. and other top management have been criticized for putting off the concerns of Morgan Stanley portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry and for a share price that's plummeted 50 percent since 2002.
Soon after Morgan's attack last week on The Times, the publisher's spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, was phoning Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon seeking advice, sources familiar with the matter said.
In addition to fallout from the Jayson Blair scandal and Judith Miller's controversial imprisonment, The Times' business has been suffering.
The paper lost nearly 20 percent of its readers in the five boroughs between 2001 and 2004, as it pushed to reinvent itself as a national publication. Its daily circulation in New York City fell to 260,526 copies from 320,682.
Despite the sagging stock performance and job cuts across the company, Sulzberger and CEO Janet Robinson were awarded hefty payouts. Robinson's 2005 restricted stock award jumped nearly fivefold from a year earlier to roughly $2 million. Sulzberger's stock award nearly doubled to $817,500.
Morgan Stanley's investment arm, a longtime shareholder of The Times with a 5 percent stake, blasted management for the executive compensation and for failing to address the company's woeful stock price. It also called for an end to The Times' two-tier stock system, which it said "fosters a lack of accountability."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Maybe China can buy them out.
Dinosaur Media Extinction Alert Ping. Please advise if you want off this litst. Abb...
Heheh........or maybe Iran. They could also use some good tilted news coverage.
If you can't trust the news, why spend money buying it?
They still don't get it. Report the honest truth and let the reader make his/her own decisions.
Looks like the Chief Rats are grabbing the cheese as the ship sinks and all the little critters jump the rails.
Ah, good news with my morning coffee!
Good people are connecting rapidly.
Sell to the Washington Times
This liberal rag cannot die fast enough. Let us pray that others of their like expire along with them, Atlanta Constipation, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, La. Times and the list of Socialist continues. Can they please drag PBS and NPR into the crypt with them?
Probably even worse that these reports indicate.
You know company finances are going southward when they start selling off real estate----as the NYT did year or so ago.
"Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon..."
That is some name.
LOL.....beautiful.
Please, please, please. LOL.
They are liberals-- why should compensation be tied in any way to actual performance? Isn't the fact that they really, really, really want to succeed more important than the fact that they suck at their jobs? Why should they be blamed because the newspaper is falling apart under their leadership? (see tagline)
Liz, did you see the article last nite from E&P where John Carroll (former LA Times Editor) was crying in his beer about the sorry state newspapers?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1622245/posts
Not too bright......took them awhile to catch on.
Sink bloated Old Gray Bitch, sink to the bottom of the ocean and rest with the whale sh** surrounding you there.
I get lotsa satisfaction thinking about "new generation high-tech Pinch" ---- hiring some 250 for the NYT online sector.
250!!!!
Watta drain that musta been on the bottom line.
I wonder how Pinch explained that one to Dads.
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