Financial Transparency for Thee, But Not For Me at The New York Times
Thomas Lifson and Jack Risko have done a tremendous public service by reviewing the financial statements and public disclosures of The New York Times Company.
The pair have come up with treasure trove of interesting info. The three juiciest tidbits are these:
- The Times Company’s flagship newspaper, The New York Times, is only third in circulation in the New York Metro area. Its Metro circulation of about 556,000 is well behind that of The New York Post (663,000) and The New York Daily News (689,000), and has dropped 27% since 1993.
- The growth of its advertising revenues badly trails inflation, and trails the general rise in advertising costs by even more.
- The Times Company may have hit a wall in its effort to increase The Times’ circulation in the rest of the nation with its national edition.
Not that disgruntled shareholders can do much about it:
Management in a public company spinning such data might face a hostile takeover or shareholder revolt.
Not the New York Times.
The New York Times Company’s common shares are divided into separate classes, with the holdings of the founding Sulzberger clan able to elect a majority of directors, despite accounting for a single digit share of total equity. The family gets to call the shots, and so far they are sticking with Pinch Sulzberger, who dreamed up the national circulation strategy, along with some other growth and diversification moves (buying the Boston Globe and investing in the widely unwatched Discovery Times cable channel) which have not exactly set the world on fire.
The way that the Times reports its numbers – so obliquely as to draw attention away from its decline – shows that it does not run itself for shareholders as a normal public corporation should.
But there are financial consequences (chart is as of the market close on March 7):
Although the stock has gotten up off the floor from its low of about $26, it has a long way to go before it can be pronounced healthy. A declining core newspaper business, a national newpaper business reaching its plateau, questionable investments such as Discovery Times and About.com, and (of course) a stubborn mindset that won’t see the problem of liberal bias in their newsrooms (including at the Boston Globe) that continues to alienate potential readers, all seem to make a full financial recovery unlikely, at least in the near term.
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Other Times-Related Blasts from the Past:
- Jan. 30 — NYT Columnist: Bush Reads “Mao: The Unknown Story,†Confirming That It’s a “Conservative†Book
- Jan. 6 — The NY Times and The AFL-CIO Futilely Attempt to Exploit the Sago 12
- Jan. 5 — The New York Times’ Disgraceful (and Wrong) Opportunism in the West Virginia Coal Mine Deaths
- Jan. 2, 2006 — New York Times: Transparency for Thee, But Not For Me
- Dec. 31, 2005 — Does Paul Krugman of the New York Times Read His Own Newspaper?
- Dec. 6 — Other NY Papers in a Snooze While The New York Daily (Does) News
- Nov. 11 — One More Reason The New York Times Should Be Paying YOU $50 If You Get TimesSelect
- Oct. 22 — Nicholas Kristof and Mao: He Just, Can’t, Let, Go
- Sept. 21 — There May Be More “Black Tuesdays†in The New York Times’ Future
- Sept. 15 — The New York Times-Washington Post Headline-Sharing Conspiracy Vindicates Their Longtime Critics
- Aug. 8 — If It’s Monday, There Must Be At Least Three Obvious New York Times Errors, Omissions, or Hilarities to Report
- July 17 — New York Times Running Out?
Just ‘Cause They’re Number Three, Don’t Expect Them To Try Harder
Found via Bizzy Blog, Thomas Lifson and Jack Risko of The American Thinker go deep inside the New York Times’ financial numbers. This factoid is particularly intreguing:The Times has seen its comparable core metropolitan circulation decline by 27% sin…
Trackback by Ed Driscoll.com — March 8, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
[…] f the NY Times, first by Thomas Lifson and Jack Risko of the American Thinker, and then in this followup at BizzyBlog, complete with a very illuminating stock performance chart…
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Pingback by Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » Behind The Times: Do Numbers Lie? — March 9, 2006 @ 10:10 am
I would be interested to know how much that drop in readership has to do with the advent of news websites like Google, Yahoo and others which give you the same news without having to buy a newspaper, or the fact that you don’t have to pay to read NY Times stories on the web, except for those Time Select columns. That is, does their declining paper based share of the market truly reflect a decline, or do they have a significant share of online readership that just doesn’t pay for the paper hard copy version of the times?
Comment by nykrindc — March 9, 2006 @ 6:11 pm
#3, you raise a good point, but I think the numbers will show that the other two NYC papers have stayed at about the same level or declined slightly since 1993, vs. the NYT which is down 27% in Metro NY.
I don’t see why the NYT should more affected by Google and Yahoo than the other two papers, which would have to be the case for that argument to fly.
Comment by TBlumer — March 9, 2006 @ 7:49 pm
I can’t understand why it’s happening. To say that Pinch is left wing is one thing but is he financially suicidal too? Why do they persist in this feckless drive to get the President by every lame-brained scheme. Only the Wiley Coyote gets it wrong more often. And the Times has just as much success every time they drag out Abu Ghraib or some other tired accusation. They are a parody of themselves now. I’d believe The National Enquirer before I’d believe The New York Times!
Comment by foreign devil — March 20, 2006 @ 5:50 pm