The Sulzbergers, the New York Times' controlling stock-holders, are miffed at criticism of their poor business performance.
In a February 3, 2007, article in the New York Times, reporter Katharine Q. Seelye wrote:
The Ochs-Sulzberger family, which controls The New York Times Company, said yesterday that it was withdrawing most of its personal assets, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, from Morgan Stanley.
. . .
The withdrawal was apparently first reported online by CNNMoney.com, which suggested that the move was in retaliation against one of Morgan Stanley’s fund managers, who has been critical of the company’s ownership structure and performance.
Shares of the Times Company have declined 16 percent over the last year as the company struggles to maintain advertising and circulation in the face of competition from the Internet. The company announced this week that it was writing down by $814.4 million the value of its New England newspapers, The Boston Globe and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
Hassan Elmasry is a portfolio manager for Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the bank’s asset management arm, which owns more than 7 percent of the Times Company’s shares. Since June 2005, he has been pushing for the Times Company to change its corporate structure, saying that the current arrangement limits accountability.
It should also be noted that the assets the Sulzbergers are withdrawing from Morgan Stanley's management, to the extent that they are invested in New York Times stock, have a market value distressingly lower than when Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., took over management of the Times.
What causes the ruckus is the two-tier stock capitalization of the Times. Publicly traded Class A shares are entitled to elect 30% of the company's directors. Class B Shares owned by the Sulzbergers, with 88% in a family trust, are entitled to elect 70% of the directors, which means that management is essentially unaccountable to outside investors.
If you are a liberal-progressive-socialist, you will love the editorial views of the Times, which pervade so-called "news," as well as the editorial page. But whether liberal or a conservative, all observers agree that the paper has undergone marked changes since the 1997 accession of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., to the CEO position.
From an editorial viewpoint, the Times's long-time liberal stance has been shifted even farther to the Left. The paper is rabidly anti-Bush, anti-Christian, pro-UN, and a cheerleader for liberal-progressive "social justice." The Times repeatedly is embroiled in scandals, from the Jayson Blair affair and the Judith Miller farrago, to deliberately revealing national security secrets and knowingly presenting false versions of stories to comport with its editorial positions. All of them pivot off editorial intentions to attack the administration and Judeo-Christian values.
From a financial viewpoint, the Times has performed poorly compared to its competition. The stock price over the past two years of booming stock markets has dropped 41%. In late December, Standard & Poor's cut NYT's long-term corporate and unsecured debt to BBB+ from A-.
Total revenues have been flat, growing less than 7% over the last four years. In that period, from 2002 to 2005, net income after taxes dropped 18.9%, and in 2006 turned into a net loss almost twice as large as the preceding four years' average earnings.
Among investors the consensus is that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., lacks judgment. Preoccupied with pushing a bevy of social justice causes, from affirmative action to same-sex marriage, young Mr. Sulzberger has roiled the Times management and its reporting staff.
Former CEO of General Electric Jack Welsh has assembled an investment group to bid for the Time's Boston Globe. And former AIG insurance group chief Hank Greenberg heads another group that would like to gain a board position on the parent Times company in order to reorient its policies.
Both groups see the Times's poor performance as opening an opportunity to buy and rehab underperforming assets, in the classic Graham-and-Dodd value-investment mode.
Even the super-liberal New Yorker Magazine has taken a shot at Mr. Sulzberger, as reported in the New York Daily News:
Hard Times: New Yorker punches out Pinch
Monday, December 12th, 2005
New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who famously got punched in the eye by a bicycle messenger in 2002, gets another shiner in the new issue of The New Yorker.
In a must-read profile for media soothsayers, writer Ken Auletta raises the question of whether Pinch [Arthur, Jr.] Sulzberger can survive journalistic embarrassments and shrinking profits.
In the final analysis, even socialists have to pay attention to the capitalist marketplace. Non-family shareholders may not be able directly to unseat Mr. Sulzberger, but the family is paying dearly in diminished asset value for his ideological preoccupations.
viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com
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Under Sulzberger, the NYTimes became dominated by liberal secular Jews, whose views permeate every aspect including the puzzles and 'filler'.
The media and for that matter Hillary's army of media backers, are largely drawn from this universe of writers; but the problem is that the rise of alternative media has caused non-Jews to identify the intense bias…if I have to read another catty STYLE section review next Sunday….and to switch to electronic media feeds from non-biased sources.
NEW YORKER has the same writing policy….about Jews, for Jewish readers, or, even worse, by Jews about other cultures.
I've read and cherished both of these publications since I could read and either I've gotten sensitized to the policy bias in both; or they have really targeted their audience and left out much of the rest of emerging America….surely there is more to travel than a piece on the congregations in CUBA?
the NYTimes has violated its once vaulted journalistic standards in ways that have sullied its credibility…Publishing Wilson's diatribe against the Bush administration is just one example…are they protecting Berger because he is 'one of them' i.e. a liberal Jew and would they if he were a Black Baptist?
Don't think this is racist; it's really cultural. Many conservative Jews instantly recognize the bias and remember the old days when it was hidden…if I want biased writing I'll go to the Jeruselem Post or, gasp, DEBKA FILE. But the NYTimes was a beacon of integrity; the paper of record with an obsession with telling the truth in a fair and astute manner.
I yearn for the old days when I read it, front to back, every morning no matter where I was and what I was doing.
Now when I read it, I stumble over the bias in articles like rocks in what was once a superhighway to the truth!
Comment by fjh | February 5, 2007
"In the final analysis, even socialists have to pay attention to the capitalist marketplace. "
This is the Leftist/liberal/socialist Achilles heel. It's never their unworkable ideas; it's always the failure of society to implement them properly. In the immortal words of George Will, "When a liberal presidential candidate fails to carry Kansas, do they ask what's wrong with their candidate? No. The book they quickly turn into a best seller is, 'What's the Matter With Kansas?'"
Comment by sedonaman | February 5, 2007
"There is more truth printed on the label of a can of tomatoes than in your average daily newspaper." — Gaily, Gaily: The Autobiography of Ben Hecht, referring to his experience as a reporter for The Chicago Tribune. His observation was made way before the Truth in Labeling Act.
Comment by sedonaman | February 5, 2007
So why has the NYTimes, in your opinion lost so much marketshare?
Internet? liberal bias? travel promotions for $500/night resorts?
Ads for hideous Bulgari hand bags?
Media moguls have some unique formulas for making money from their media. Read the SHIPPING NEWS by Annie Prouleux and learn how news stories are written using the famous example of an off shore storm…What's changed in the NYT's formula?
Comment by fjh | February 5, 2007
“So why has the NYTimes, in your opinion lost so much marketshare?”
Consider:
"Any affirmative action plan that doesn't take race into account is worthless." — New York Times editorializing over the University of Michigan being sued for racial discrimination against whites.
"Our affirmative action plan doesn't take race into account." — The New York Times trying to explain that their hiring of Jayson Blaire (a black reporter who fabricated news articles) was not because of his race. (Never mind he fabricated his stories.)
It is also quite obvious to everyone except the dead that The Times has what Charles Krauthammer calls "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDR) and has been trying to subvert the president's every move, ever since the election of 2000. This is not to say one cannot reasonably disagree with the President's policies. The trouble is, the disagreement coming out of the The Times has been decidedly unreasonable, if not lunatic. For example, if a Times reporter asked the president what time it is, and the president said, “It’s two o’clock,” the reporter would likely say, “Aha! It’s 2:02! That makes you a liar!” Those responsible for the content of the paper have apparently forgotten that a good percentage of the population voted for Bush and continue to support his foreign police of no appeasement, and that they do so because they, unlike The Times’ editors, are smart enough to know that appeasement of your enemies has never worked and never will.
The Times has also on many occasions flirted with treason by knowingly printing classified information that made fighting the war more difficult for the U.S.
In view of the above, a better question to ask might be why anyone would still take The Times unless he a) is himself afflicted by BDR, b) is an enemy of the U.S., or c) needs to for business reasons.
Comment by sedonaman | February 5, 2007
On this issue, I think it's wise to take a cue from Thomas Jefferson:
“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.”
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“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who
reads nothing but newspapers.”
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“I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.” – Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | February 6, 2007