A Long/Short Play on About.com and NYT Online (NYT, TRB)

Fred Wilson, a New York City venture capitalist who runs the insightful A VC blog, believes there's alot of pent-up value in The New York Times Company (NYT) -- in particular, in its high-growth internet properties.

Wilson thinks that About.com, which NYT bought for $410m a little over a year ago, is now worth north of $1b, given the valuation recently slapped on iVillage ($600m from NBC) and WebMD ($2.3b). Combine that with the NYT Online's dominant market position (it's the largest global news brand with 74m unique visitors a month), and Wilson doesn't understand why NYT has a market cap of only $3.6b.

He answers his own question -- Wall St. doesn't like print newspapers these days, and NYT has been handcuffed by that part of its business. 'So how,' asks Wilson, 'do you capture this [internet] value inside of the New York Times Company as an investor?'

He sugggests going long The New York Times Company (NYT) and short a major media company with little dynamic internet exposure -- The Tribune Company (TRB):

you have hedged out of the newspaper and TV station risk and you are now long the New York Times' Internet properties. It is certainly not a perfect hedge and there are risks that are specific to each company that could cause this trade to fail, but I think its a pretty nice trade.

Commenter Niki Scevak, however, notes that Tribune does own 33% of CareerBuilder, a high-growth net property.