Posted on 08/16/2006 11:47:14 AM PDT by Kitten Festival
It has finally happened. The left is beginning to turn against New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., known far and wide as “Pinch.” It is simple to understand why: the New York Times is becoming a failing business under his stewardship, and the Left needs the NYT.
Faithful readers of The American Thinker have known this for over two years, as we have chronicled the journalistic and economic decline of the New York Times Company. We started warning investors that their money was at risk before the common stock lost half its value. We slogged through to SEC reports, pushed the numbers, and proved the shocking decline of the core business and major profit center of the company, its metropolitan print edition.
But it is one thing for websites “out there” beyond the Hudson to point out that Pinch is killing the family business, and quite another for the man dubbed “the King of New York Media” by The New Republic to point out that disaster looms ahead for members of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan, who cash dividend checks, and who also control the election for the board of directors. They might start thinking seriously about the attractiveness of professional management for the enterprise which sustains what must be a sophsiticated and pleasant lifestyle.
Michael Wolff, longtime writer for New York Magazine, took to the pages of no less than Vanity Fair, the glossy definition of au courant attitudes for New Yorkers of a certain economic and social status, to openly mock Pinch in what can only be described as a “hit-piece.”
What gives?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
True - and pathetic.
I could earn NY Times investors 1000% in the first 6 months if I ran the company.
1. Close down all news operations
2. Close down all outside interests
3. Just sell the crossword puzzle as a daily
4. Create and sell books of just the NY Times crossword
puzzles
I bet circulation would skyrocket because now you have another 65% of the population buying the Times for something that is actually useful,although mindless like the paper is now.
This article made me feel warm all over for some reason.
Would be absolutely hilarious if the NYT went bankrupt. A perfect metaphor for the "bankrupt" Left in this country.
Would be absolutely hilarious if the NYT went bankrupt. A perfect metaphor for the "bankrupt" Left in this country.
I'd like to have the NYT Book Review.
Oh yes, this is definitely the "feel-good" story of the day.
Congratulations to the filmmakers: they managed to sneak in more leftist propaganda where it was totally unexpected.
The elitism of the Times even extends towards those who want to like and support them.
Its been mismanaged by a man who uses its resources to subsidize an agenda, mocking anyone who may either want information, news, or simply put, may not even agree with its agenda.
It doesn't help that all their writers bascially agree with each other, write in the same style, and have slipped on their work ethics as of late.
DMDW Ping list worthy material here...
I hope they tie a jukebox to pinch when they throw him overboard.
Every little podunk paper in the country takes its lead from the fabled times, because every newspaper editor in the country dreams of being hired by the old grey whore.
That Wolff piece on the NYT in Vanity Fair is a classic, worth slogging through the hate-Bush trash and vapid celebrity-worship of the rest of the magazine. You have to get through a nearly non-sequitur opening sentence about the White House "war on the Times," but Wolff really filets Pinch Sulzberger.
I read elsewhere that in their metro area, the NYT doesn't have anywhere near the circulation of the Post and the Daily News. The plan, as we have seen unfolding in the last decade, is to have a national edition along the lines of USA Today and become the de facto national newspaper.
The problem, as I see it, is what the Marxists call an internal contradiction as long as the Times maintains its strong internet presence.
People in the hinterlands who'd pay money for the NYT in competition with or alongside their local paper really have no incentive to do so when the product is available for free on the web, with the exception of editorial comment which the little old lady in Peoria could care less about anyway.
The stronger their web presence, the weaker the print edition outside Metro. As mentioned above, inside Metro they're getting whacked by the local competition.
Put this alongside the almost one billion dollar outlay for their white elephant headquarters building and the closure of some of their satellite printing plants (engines by the way that make possible a national edition) and Pinch seems to be presiding over an empire coming apart with centrifugal force.
Diversifying the operation has led Pinch into very questionable purchases, further weakening the core. It's only a matter of starting the countdown to takeover clock. But who would want it?
Knight-Ridder isn't doing that well. Non-publishing conglomerates would be crazy to buy the Times, too. Maybe the Times will go the way of General Motors, a slow slide into irrelevance, bankruptcy, then oblivion.
At 2:54 pm EDT, the NY SLIMES stock NYT is doing its normal thing, diving like a rock on the stock market. It is down 2.17%
NYT New York Times Company (NYSE) 8/16/2006 2:54 PM
Last:
21.67 Change:
-0.48 Open:
22.25 High:
22.25 Low:
21.58 Volume:
2,058,300
Percent Change: -2.17%
Yield:
3.23% P/E Ratio:
16.54 52 Week Range:
21.70 to 35.00
Anyone who watches Gilmore Girls can tell you that Logan's dad is a prick.
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