NY Times Suffers

I know people's reading habits are changing and newspaper readership has been suffering for years... but I can't help but wonder if plain crappy reporting is responsible for this current problem in "journalism."

From Family Business Magazine:

Investors withhold 42% of votes for N.Y. Times directors.

New York Times Co. shareholders withheld 42% of their votes for four directors at the company's annual meeting April 24. "While the vote is largely symbolic since the Sulzberger family remains in control of the company, the significant withhold vote reflects growing impatience among investors about the company's lagging stock price," the Associated Press reported. "The size of the withhold vote was even larger than last year, when 30 percent of investors withheld their votes for directors elected by holders of the company's publicly traded shares."

In a statement, Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said, "Management and the full Board will continue to listen carefully to the issues raised by our shareholders. That said, the Ochs-Sulzberger family remains firmly and unanimously committed to the dual class share structure that has been in place since before the Company went public in 1969. With approximately 19% of the Company's Class A shares and 89% of its Class B shares, our family's interests are very much aligned with other shareholders in seeing the Company's performance improve."

Before the vote, Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory firm, had recommended that Times investors withhold their votes for the four directors elected by Class A shareholders. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece the day before the vote, Donald E. Graham, chairman and CEO of the family-controlled Washington Post Co. -- which has a similar stock structure -- decried ISS's recommendation. "[I]f the stock structure were eliminated," Graham wrote, "a line of buyers eager to purchase the company would form within minutes.... The line would include private equity firms, high-ego billionaires, international media companies lacking a famous property and lots more. Who would bid the highest? Perhaps a principled owner, dedicated to the welfare of the Times and the Boston Globe; willing to anger its friends on a regular basis, as good newspapers do; and prepared to spend money and run other risks to sustain the paper like the Sulzbergers. Or maybe the bidder would be someone quite different." (Sources: Associated Press, April 24, 2007; Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2007.)

What a funny quote, by the way, from the Chairman/CEO of the Washington Post. Apparently the only groups who can give "objective and accurate reporting" are people hired by the WaPo and the NYT.