Happy dance time!
Posted on 04/25/2009 3:33:16 PM PDT by kellynla
The nation's largest left-wing newspaper and the bible for network news producers and bookers may be going under. This week, The New York Times announced more staggering losses: nearly $75 million dollars in the first quarter alone. The New York Post is reporting that the Times Company owes more than $1 billion and has just $34 million in the bank. A few months ago, the company borrowed $250 million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim at a reported 14 percent interest rate. With things going south fast, pardon the pun, Slim might want to put in a call to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
The spin from Sulzberger is that the Internet is strangling the newspaper industry, and there is some truth to that. Why read an ideologically crazed paper when you can acquire a variety of information on your computer? But other papers are not suffering nearly as much as the Times, so there must be more to it.
There is no question that the Times has journalistic talent. This week the paper won five Pulitzers. It's true that the Pulitzer people favor left-wing operations (the past eight Pulitzer Prizes for commentary have gone to liberal writers), but New York Times journalists often do good reporting.
The problem is that under Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller, the Times has gone crazy left, attacking those with whom the paper disagrees and demonstrating a hatred for conservatives (particularly President Bush) that is almost pathological. The Times features liberal columnists in every section of the paper, and they hit low, often using personal invective to smear perceived opponents.
That unfair and unbalanced approach has alienated a large number of readers and advertisers. According to a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 46 percent of Americans define themselves as conservative. Just 34 percent say they are liberal. In this very intense marketplace, insulting half the country on a daily basis may not be a great business plan.
The Times company also has a major problem with The Boston Globe, which Sulzberger bought back in 1993. That paper is on the verge of bankruptcy and recently told its employees that it will cut their pay and health benefits. Since the Times and the Globe are big on "universal" health care, that caused some giggling in anti-Times precincts.
Over the past few months, newspapers in Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Denver have either folded or filed for bankruptcy. With the exception of The Rocky Mountain News, all the papers were committed left-wing enterprises. The truth is that most Americans are traditional-minded folks. They believe their country is noble; they want respectful discourse. Fanaticism of any kind is not the American way.
The New York Times is most definitely a committed left-wing concern that is openly contemptuous of the conservative, traditional point of view. That is the primary reason the paper may soon dissolve. And all the cash in Carlos Slim's fat wallet is not going to change that.
It would be great, and a bit of karma, for the large influential Times to be come a large, influential conservative newspaper.
“It would be great, and a bit of karma, for the large influential Times to be come a large, influential conservative newspaper.”
Yea, it would indeed be great to see the old gray lady go down. But, sadly, I smell another bail-out coming. Obama and fellow dem’s are not about to let this happen.
Let it die. Millions of trees will be saved.
I read this fantasy that the Times only recently went hard left which is BS. Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer in the 1930s writing fawning pieces on Stalin as Uncle Joe starved 6 million Ukrainians. Duranty knew it and knew Stalin was a monster.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros keeps the Slimes afloat.
I’ve heard rumors of a government bail out for the Times and other news dinosaurs. This would ordinarily outrage most citizens (can you say Pravda?), but we are quickly becoming numb to bail outs....so what is one more? One thing is for certain; you can’t force people to read the Times or buy GM cars. However, I see the Times becoming much like NPR, heavily subsidized and having very few readers.
The NY Times is not a newspaper, it is just a tabloid stuffed with bull shit.
“It would be great, and a bit of karma, for the large influential Times to be (be)come a large, influential conservative newspaper.”
From your mouth to God’s ear!
Universal government-paid health care would amount to a huge subsidy for the Times organization.
YES!!!!!!!
I'd like to be there too, when this rust bucket of a newspaper hits the iceberg. Pulizter or no Pulizter, The New York Times has been, no pun intended, living on borrowed time for the past twenty or so years, and as O'Reilly correctly (for once) pointed out, the paper's hatred of President Bush has cost them more than a lion's share of readers. And like the train wreck that it is, the Times has many of its fellow print and broadcast counterparts hitched on and they're all going over the cliff at breakneck speed.
I say good riddance to them all.
By some miracle should the Times become a successful conservative paper I would think it would become a positive influence on the remaining enemedia, an event that leftists would do anything to prevent.
An astute entrepeneur can fill the vaccuum with a good conservative paper.
Perhaps it could become a subsidiary of Freerepublic! :o)
I’d be willing to join an effort like that.
The real question is “can a good newspaper survive in a bad market like Cesspool City?”
The Left cannot let the NYT fail.
A bailout will happen. Whether taxpayer-funded, or privately-funded, it will happen.
King Obama will never let the NYT go under. Bailout coming.
I agree.. Prez O smiley face, will not let the NYT go under.
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