Deathwatch for NYT a Tad Premature

Why are some people so eager to write The New York Times's (NYT) obituary?

Michael Wolff is positively kvelling today over Michael Hirschorn's declaration in The Atlantic Monthly that the Times could -- almost certainly won't, but just barely possibly could -- go out of business in four months' time.

"For so long, mine was the lonely and vilified voice saying that the New York Times was doomed -- vilified most hotly by people at the Times," he writes. "But the end of the New York Times has now become a conventional forecast....I don't know of anyone now -- at least anyone who isn't employed by the Times -- who believes that the business, as currently organized and managed, can survive."

Michael, meet Felix Salmon. Here's Felix's less dire prognosis: "I think it's pretty safe to say that the NYT is going to continue to exist in its present form for quite a long time yet."

While Wolff laces up his grave-dancing shoes, Felix and Poynter's Rick Edmonds point out some considerable flaws in Hirschorn's analysis. For one thing, while Hirschorn imagines that someone could come along and snap up the Times for a paltry $1 billion -- the bargain of the century compared to the $5 billion Rupert Murdoch (NWS) had to lay out for The Wall Street Journal -- that number is illusory: Notes Felix, "The NYT has two classes of stock, as Hirschorn knows full well: the secondary-market price of the non-voting stock can't simply be extrapolated to get the amount that someone would need to pay for voting control."

As for the idea of a May shut-down date, it's based on the expiration of one of the Times Co.'s two revolving $400 million credit lines. But, again, that fact has less significance than it might seem to on first blush, since the company to date has only drawn a total of $400 million between the two. And that's even before considering the cash it can raise by borrowing against its building and selling properties in Boston (albeit at depressed prices.)

In other words, the Times, like Steve Jobs, looks to be the victim of premature memorializing. Don't take it too hard, Michael. Maybe your Newsweek deathwatch will work out better.

Comments

[notsosmart:]

dead paper printing.

Jan 09 01:57 PM

[donzelion:]

THE New York Times: raised to dominance with war profiteering in 1989 (through the Spanish American War), destroyed as irrelevant with efforts at war profiteering since 2003 (Iraq War, and Judy Miller's quest for WMD).

The tombstone will read: "They shall reap what they sow." (Though honestly, I expect the ink's not yet dry - particularly since the future is digital ink...Amazon or Microsoft will buy out NYT. Amazon as a loss leader to drive Kindle and other sales; Microsoft since NYT would offer about three times the value as Yahoo for one tenth the price).

Jan 10 05:37 PM

[donzelion:]

Err, that was the Spanish American War of 1898, not 1989. At the time (1890s), NYT built a reputation as a tad less lurid than its yellow journalist colleagues (a very slight "tad" though). Today, they continue that reputation - a tad less lurid than the WallStreetFoxNewsJourn... and its cohort, but in the end, not all that different.

Jan 10 05:48 PM

[Freedoms Truth:]

"Why are some people so eager to write The New York Times's (NYT) obituary?"

Because the Ol' Grey Whore, run by Pinch the leftist twerp, chock full of Manhattanite arrogance and unapologetic journalistic malpractice and bias, deserves it.

The Seattle PI today, NYT tomorrow.

Jan 10 10:59 PM