John Gapper in the FT today has a good piece on the woes of the New York Times, but he says the Gray Lady is one of the "few print publications with a good chance of thriving in the digital age".It has been a helluva week for the New York Times as mogul David Geffen emerged as someone being interested in buying a stake in the New York Times Company and elsewhere it was speculated by Gawker that Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, could become the biggest shareholder in the New York Times in the next couple of years because of the high interest rates the Ochs-Sulzberger family borrowed $250m at.Gapper says that while it must be tempting for Arthur Sulzberger Junior to sell up, he says that unlike the Bancroft family who cashed in two years ago and sold the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, he should hang on.
"The family should learn from its mistakes by holding on to the enterprise long enough to clean up its balance sheet and put the paper on a solid footing. Then it should retire with dignity by selling it to someone with sharper instincts."Despite the financial errors of the controlling family, The New York Times is not just another doomed US city paper. It is one of the few print publications with a good chance of thriving in the digital age."
He has some praise for the Ochs-Sulzbergers. This for instance, he says they are better publishers than media owners, which has seen them turn a city paper into a national and global brand with a loyal, affluent readership in print and online. Compare that to the Graham family and The Washington Post, which has lost some of its heyday cache as it has become more local and less an international force.Talking of newspaper brands that have made a global impact, The Guardian always gets a mention here. Not always like this though as Gapper takes a swipe in his piece, which seems harsh.
"Meanwhile, it [The New York Times] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and- pasting (or aggregating) from others."
Looking towards the future what the paper really needs he says is an owner to best exploit its power and reputation as a force in journalism on and offline. Big question: is that owner person a Mexican telecoms billionaire such as Slim or an entertainment mogul such as Geffen? What does Geffen want with the paper anyway? The kind of owner it needs Gapper says is another billionaire, Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.
"Bloomberg, who is demonstrably attached to New York, has entrepreneurial and financial talent, has a track record of cultivating rigorous and independent journalism, and knows how to profit from digital subscriptions."
What one wonders could Bloomberg do with the New York Times and its digital business? Could he turn a profit? Would he even be interested? All questions for the (near) future.For now the Ochs-Sulzberger family control 89% of the voting shares, which is a fortress of power, but that fortress is well and truly under assault. One more thing, I mean really why does the New York Times have 1,300 editorial staff (compared this to the FT which has 550 or The Guardian which will have 800 by the end of the year). Who can survive with those numbers in this digital age?
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Did Google ever really want a newspaper? Did it want the New York Times? Well it doesn't now and
Gordon Macmillan
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