[Marxism] NY Times on thin ice

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/05/new-york-times200905
The Inheritance

With a doomsday clock ticking for newspapers as we know them, no one has 
more at stake than fourth-generation New York Times publisher Arthur 
Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who is scrambling to keep his family’s prized asset 
alive. Some see him as a lightweight cheerleader, others as the last, 
best defender of quality journalism. Talking to company insiders, the 
author examines the nexus of dynasty and character that has brought the 
57-year-old Sulzberger to the precipice.

by Mark Bowden May 2009

I was in a taxi on a wet winter day in Manhattan three years ago when my 
phone rang, displaying “111-111-1111,” the peculiar signature of an 
incoming call from The New York Times.

“Mark? It’s Arthur Sulzberger.”

For weeks I had been trying to talk with Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the 
publisher and chairman of the New York Times Company. We had met once 
before, on friendly terms, and sometime after that I had informed him 
that I was hoping to write a story about him. I figured he was calling 
now to set something up. Instead he asked, “Have you seen the New Yorker 
piece?”

The article in question, just published, was bruising. It had surely 
been painful for him to read. Among other indignities, it featured a 
remark by the celebrated former Times man Gay Talese, the author of one 
of the most popular histories of the newspaper, The Kingdom and the 
Power. Speaking of Arthur, the fifth member of the Ochs-Sulzberger 
dynasty to preside over the paper, Talese had said, “You get a bad king 
every once in a while.”

I told Arthur that I had not yet fully read the story. “Well, I’m 
getting out of the business,” he said. Startled, I gazed through the 
window at the cars and people shouldering through the cold rain, the 
headline already forming in my mind: publishing scion resigns! “Wait, 
Arthur,” I said. “Is this a major scoop? Or are you just saying that you 
aren’t talking to writers anymore?” He laughed his high-pitched, zany 
laugh. “The latter,” he said.
The New York Times archive

A Vanity Fair compilation of stories covering The New York Times’s 
august past, and angst-ridden future.

Now, I respect people who avoid the spotlight, and a reluctance to be 
publicly vivisected is a sure sign of intelligence. But ducking 
interviews is an awkward policy for the leader of the world’s most 
celebrated newspaper, one that sends a small army of 
reporters—approximately 400 of them—into the field every day asking 
questions. Still, I could understand Arthur’s decision. After presiding 
or helping to preside over a decade of unprecedented prosperity, the 
publisher and chairman of the Times had recently begun to appear 
overmatched. Two of his star staffers were discovered to have violated 
basic rules of reporting practice; he had been bullied by the newsroom 
into firing his handpicked executive editor, Howell Raines; and he had 
spent much of the previous year in a confusing knot of difficulty 
surrounding one of his reporters and longtime friends, Judith Miller. 
For an earnest and well-meaning man, the hereditary publisher had begun 
to look dismayingly small.

He has been shrinking ever since. In 2001, The New York Times celebrated 
its 150th anniversary. In the years that have followed, Arthur 
Sulzberger has steered his inheritance into a ditch. As of this writing, 
Times Company stock is officially classified as junk. Arthur made a 
catastrophic decision in the 1990s to start aggressively buying back 
shares ($1.8 billion worth from 2000 to 2004 alone). This was considered 
a good investment at the time, and had the effect of increasing the 
stock’s value. Shares were going for more than $50. Now they are 
slipping below $4—less than the price of the Sunday Times. Arthur’s 
revenues are in free fall: the bottom has dropped out of both newspaper 
and Internet advertising. He has done more than anyone in the business 
to showcase newspaper journalism online. It hasn’t helped much. The 
content and page views of the newspaper’s Web site, nytimes.com, may be 
the envy of the profession, but as a recent report from Citigroup 
explained, “The Internet has taken away far more advertising than it has 
given.” Layoffs have occurred in the once sacrosanct newsroom.

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