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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| How the NYT fell apart |
| 2007-10-18 |
| Michael S. Malone, "Silicon Insider" @ abc.com Boom! And down goes the biggest newspaper name of all. As you may have read, yesterday brokerage giant Morgan Stanley dumped its entire stake -- $183 million worth -- in the New York Times, in which it was the second largest shareholder. Not surprisingly, Times stock immediately slumped, bottoming at a nearly 3 percent drop to $18.28 -- the lowest it has been in a decade. The actual damage is probably even larger than that. . . . On the surface, this appears to be a battle about power. The Sulzbergers have run the Times for several generations -- long enough to be synonymous with the enterprise. But, despite having the family scion, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. running the business, time (and the need for capital) have reduced the family's control -- and allowed in less sympathetic investors like Elmasry and Morgan. It was in an effort to shore up that slipping control that the Sulzberger's created a "dual-class" stock structure for the Times, which gave the family super-voting over and above the hoi polloi of mere investors. The second, unstated, reason for this unusual financial structure was to protect the position of "Pinch" Sulzberger, whose leadership has been increasingly under fire. But speaking as a technologist and a veteran journalist (and someone who once wrote for the Times), I think there are even deeper levels to this story -- those dealing with the often foolish choices entrenched companies make in the face of technological revolutions. . . . As hard as may be for younger readers of this column to believe, twenty years ago, the New York Times was unquestionably the newspaper of record for the United States and (with the London Times) for much of the rest of the world. It had the most famous reporters and columnists, its coverage set the standard for all other news, and its opinions, delivered ex cathedra from the upper floors of the Gray Lady on 43rd Street set the topics of this country's political debate. Incredibly, almost every bit of that power has been squandered over the last two decades. It's been a long time since anyone considered the Times to be anything but the newspaper of opinion for anyone but the residents of a few square miles of midtown Manhattan. Indeed, about all the newspaper has left of the old days under "Pinch's" dad, Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, is that old Time's imperiousness -- earned back then, and more than a little absurd today. Would this decline in reputation have occurred without the rise of the Internet? To some degree, yes. You can mark the turn in the Times' reputation from the early 1990s, when it began to put, on the front page, an increasing number of opinion pieces and feature reporting (most infamously, a glimpse into the apartment of William Kennedy Smith's purported rape victim). . . . Increased editorial influence on its reporting, an on-going effort to enforce a business model on a market that didn't want it -- the Times wasn't alone in making these mistakes; indeed, they characterized almost every newspaper in America. Which is why they are all in trouble. But the Times made one more mistake -- one which it alone could make, and which I think ultimately led to yesterday's meltdown. Most newspapers adopted the always dangerous strategy of trying to become more like one's competitors rather than establishing the defensible position of being even more true to oneself. Like most newspapers, the Times decided to become more timely, more hip, and more judgmental than the electronic media -- when it should have become better reported, more objective, and better written; professionalism being the one arena where the new competitors would have a hard time competing. What made the Times' decision not to pursue this strategy particularly stupid was that it was, after all, 'America's newspaper of record', a role in which it justly reveled. But you can't hold that title while pandering to the political and cultural views of readers on the Upper West Side. And you can't claim "all the news that's fit to print" when you neglect to notice that an American soldier in Iraq just won the Medal of Honor. In the old days, if the Times didn't cover it, it didn't happen. That insulation is long gone: if the Times doesn't cover it, the blogosphere will -- and millions of readers will starting wondering about the judgment and biases of the New York Times. Frankly, investors in the Times would be fools not to question the business judgment of the company -- and major shareholders, like Morgan, would be criminally irresponsible to their clients if they didn't start challenging the decisions of Times management -- or not read the "dual class" stock structure as a way for the Sulzbergers to not answer those questions. If you surfed the Web yesterday you couldn't miss the fact that millions of folks out there were cheering the impending End of Times. I didn't. I want the Gray Lady to straighten out, clean herself up, and regain her old dignity. America needs an honest woman as its newspaper of record. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 Good fucking riddance. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-10-18 22:57 |
| #5 And in the modern days, people give less weight to opinions with unclosed HTML code-lets. PIMF!! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-10-18 22:04 |
| #4 In the old days, if the Times didn't cover it, it didn't happen. In the old days, the Times was just as biased in its coverage, it was just less obvious given the measured tone and the lack of competition. Like the dinosaurs, when the climate changed they couldn't compete -- that planet-buster comet was merely the final straw. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-10-18 22:02 |
| #3 They chose to be partisan, without openly admitting it. That amopunts to a lie, a lie at the core. And NOBODY trusts someon who is lying liek that. I may not like Kucinich, but at least he is up front and saying loony crap and not trying to deny it. The NYT became too intersted in pushing its agenda and too disinterested in simply reporting ALL the facts dispassionately. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-10-18 19:53 |
| #2 they chose a clearly partisan agenda over reporting, in a red-tinged America. Suffer the consequences imperious beetches! I won't be satisfied til Pinch loses everything he owns and, begging for welfare, is reminded it's workfare and time to get a real job! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-10-18 19:00 |
| #1 He didn't mention the part about them being traitorous, anti-American shitbags. That'll get ya too. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2007-10-18 17:26 |