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DUBLIN — The United Nations is struggling to keep its peacekeeping missions staffed and supplied as the world endures an unprecedented combination of crises, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday as he opened a two-day visit to Ireland. "We are living through an era like no other. There are multiple crises: a food crisis, fuel crisis, flu crisis and financial crisis," Ban told an invited audience at the Dublin Castle conference center in between meetings with the president and prime minister of Ireland. "Each is a crisis we have not seen for many years, even generations. But this time they...

Dusty Rhodes, a light-hitting, hard-drinking outfielder who was at his best on baseball's biggest stage, died of cardiopulmonary arrest Wednesday at a Las Vegas hospital. He was 82. Rhodes, whose left-handed swing was tailor-made for the short right-field porch at the New York Giants' home in the Polo Grounds, never batted more than 244 times in seven big-league seasons and had a career average of just .253. But in his only World Series, in 1954, he delivered a game-winning pinch-hit home run in the 10th inning of Game 1, a game-tying pinch-hit single in Game 2 and a two-run pinch...

The New York Times must be getting increasingly desperate. The publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger, writes a paean in Time Magazine to Carlos Slim, the billionaire Mexican monopolist who threw the flailing Times a lifeline via a 250 million dollar loan earlier in the year. This is a man who has set back development in Mexico by his monopoly (or near monopoly) of the telecommunications system in that nation. He has been milking his profits for decades, blocking technological development of competitors by using his influence with politicians. The Times has historically derided this type of crony capitalism, especially...

I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Carlos Slim. He had decided to invest in the New York Times Co. and thought it would be a good idea to get to know me and my senior colleagues. It was obvious from the moment we met that he was a true Times loyalist. We had an enjoyable conversation about what was happening in this country and everywhere else in the world. Carlos, a very shrewd businessman with an appreciation for great brands, showed a deep understanding of the role that news, information and education play in our interconnected global society....

NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "comes off as a lightweight, as someone slightly out of his depth, whose dogged sincerity elicits not admiration so much as pity," writes Mark Bowden. "While no one blames him for what is clearly a crisis afflicting all newspapers, he has made a series of poor business moves that now follow him like the tail of a kite." Friend Peter Osnos says: "Sure, Arthur has made his share of mistakes. But they get recycled all the time, and he rarely gets the credit he deserves for what he's done right."

The New York Times has once again gotten itself some financial breathing room - and once again it's coming at a high price. The cash-strapped newspaper yesterday finally struck a deal with investment firm W.P. Carey & Co. to sell space in its sleek Midtown Manhattan headquarters for $225 million, and lease it back from the buyer. As part of the deal, W.P. Carey is paying a low purchase price and getting a high initial rate of return - known in the industry as the capitalization rate - of nearly 11 percent. Real-estate experts said the Times is paying a...

Amid one of the worst-ever downturns to hit the newspaper business, Arthur Sulzburger Jr., Chairman of the New York Times Company told CNBC he's never seen things this bad. "I'm not that old, so yes this is the worst I've ever seen", Sulzburger Jr. told CNBC Friday morning outside the paper's Midtown Manhattan headquarter.

Rupert Murdoch's counterintuitive quest to invest in print media helped drive away longtime lieutenant Peter Chernin. And now that Chernin can't intercede, does Murdoch want to follow News Corp.'s $5 billion buyout of Dow Jones by gobbling up the struggling New York Times Co.? The answer appears to be yes, as impossible as present economic conditions make it for most deals of any kind to get done. What's more, incredulous News Corp. insiders say Murdoch's love of print media is so fervent that he's also been talking about a play for the Los Angeles Times, which could make easier prey...

The New York Times Co. said Thursday its board has decided to suspend the newspaper publisher's quarterly dividend in a move to preserve cash as advertising spending continues to decline amid the recession. The suspension of the payout comes after New York Times slashed its dividend to 6 cents from 23 cents in November. "Today's decision provides the company with additional financial flexibility given the current economic environment and the uncertain business outlook," said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman, in a statement. "We expect the suspension of the dividend, coupled with our other actions, will help us decrease debt and improve...

Caroline Kennedy Romance Affair Caroline Kennedy rumored affair and Arthur Pinch Sulzberger? Caroline Kennedy’s rumored affair was with New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. (born Sept 22 1951) is the son of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger aka Punch Sulzberger. The son is sometimes called Arthur Pinch Sulzberger as a variation of his father’s nickname. “Obama recently named Caroline Kennedy to his vice presidential search committee - and she’s been telling friends that if he’s elected to the White House, she wants to move to Washington, D.C., and take a role in his Democratic administration,” a friend revealed....

The New York Times Company is in advanced negotiations to sell a substantial portion of its 52-story headquarters building on Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan to W. P. Carey & Company, an investment and management firm that specializes in so-called sale-leaseback transactions, the newspaper company confirmed on Thursday. Under the deal, the Times Company would sell the 19 floors it currently uses in the building but not the 6 floors it leases to other tenants. The Times Company would continue to occupy and manage its floors and would have the right to buy back the space at a predetermined price...

The New York Times appears to be on the verge of signing a deal with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to invest $250 million in the company. If your last name is "Sulzberger," be concerned. News of Slim's possible investment broke over the weekend, and now the Times itself says an announcement could come as soon as tomorrow. Slim, one of the world's richest people, would essentially be loaning the struggling newspaper a quarter of a billion dollars in exchange for convertible shares paying him high annual dividends. But he would have the right to convert that stock into common shares—and...

The New York Times Co. is in discussions with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim about investing in the newspaper publisher to help ease its financial problems, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks are ongoing and may yet fall apart but one of the options being discussed is a preferred-stock issue. Under this scenario, the Times Co. would issue Mr. Slim preferred stock, which carries no voting right but pays an annual dividend, in return for his investment. The investment would be similar to a loan. Preferred shares are often convertible into common stock after a defined period. snip...

From time to time, the editors at 24/7 Wall St. look at the odds that a number of companies may have to file for Chapter 11 over the course of the next year. The analysis involves looking at SEC filings with a focus on balance sheet, cash flow, and risk factors. Also taken into account are stock price, earnings forecasts, and the ability of a company to raise cash. In the current credit environment, many firms which would not have been on the list at the middle of last year would have to be considered now. We are covering what...

In the past week, the Fourth Estate’s Hamas cheerleaders have stripped away any pretense of being honest or neutral, with the New York Times continuing to take the side of the terrorist group in one of the most shameful journalistic episodes I have ever seen. In following the Times coverage for the past six months and checking external sources of information, one can see a clear pattern of propagandistic reporting favoring Hamas that selectively suppressed or willfully misrepresented information. Even the Times knows it has a bias problem. Readers who detected it got a chilling confirmation of their suspicions in...

Washington lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman has filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for a February article about Iseman and her relationship with Sen. John McCain. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday, alleges the article falsely communicated that Iseman and McCain had an illicit “romantic” relationship in 1999 when he was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee and she was a lobbyist representing clients before Congress. The suit also names the executive editor of the Times, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters who wrote the story as defendants. William Keller,...

If Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr, chairman and publisher of The New York Times, had paused in his Renzo Piano-designed headquarters this week, the art project commissioned for its lobby might have caught his eye. “Why are the Giants struggling?” read the message on one of the screens randomly flashing up lines from the newspaper and its website. “What is to be done?” blinked another in front of an atrium full of birch trees. The giants of US journalism are more than struggling. This week, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy, crushed by $13bn (€9.7bn, £8.7bn) of debt from Sam Zell’s...

The New York Times Co.'s (NYT) board on Thursday declared a quarterly dividend of 6 cents on its Class A and Class B common stock, down from 23 cents in the third quarter. The dividend will be paid on Dec. 15 to shareholders of record on Dec. 1. "We expect that this steep cut in the dividend, coupled with our other actions, will help us decrease debt and improve the liquidity of the company, a prudent measure in this operating environment," said Chairman Arthur Sulzberger in a statement.

The New York Times Co. has increased its estimates for how much The Boston Globe and other New England newspapers it owns have declined in value because of reductions in advertising. The Times took a $166 million accounting charge in the third quarter and said any adjustments to that estimate will come in the current quarter. In releasing preliminary third-quarter results last month, the Times estimated the charge at $100 million to $150 million. With the change and related tax adjustments, the Times had a net loss of $106 million, or 74 cents a share, in the third quarter, compared...

NYT Co. cuts retirement benefits for non-union staff

The payout will be reviewed "to determine what is most prudent in light of the overall market conditions," says Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson. Investor Richard Dorfman says: "If they make a serious cut to the dividend, which I suspect they will, that will negatively impact the stock price and that will negatively impact cash flow among the Ochs-Sulzberger families" who receive $25.1 million a year in dividends.

Boston Globe-owner The New York Times Co. said Thursday that profit for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was $10 million compared to $28.1 million for the year-ago quarter. The Times company’s revenue fell 8.9 percent to $687 million, from $754.4 million. Advertising revenue decreased 14.4 percent; circulation revenue increased 1 percent; and other revenue declined 4.2 percent. New England Media Group advertising revenue, at $74 million, was off 19 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. For the first nine months of the year, New England Media Group advertising is off 17 percent compared to the first nine months of 2007....

Will the print version of the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) still be around in 10 years? New York Times Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger tackled that question following his keynote at the WebbyConnect conference this morning: “The heart of the answer must be that we can’t care. We do care. I care very much, but we must be where people want us to be for their information… Print is going to be here, I believe, for a very long time.” The NYT is more comfortable than ever with experimentation and launching services in beta, he said. “The thought is...

To use a sports term: It is a twin killing. For regular New York Times readers in the metro area, Monday was a shocker, although long-planned: The end of the Metro section, now folded ingloriously into the end of the A-section. At least it had a Calvin Trillin gluttony story. Now Tuesday: goodbye Sports. It now comes at the end of Business (causing conflict in who knows how many households). And it's only six pages long, even with baseball playoffs on and football seasons in full swing -- more like the national edition than the local, or a mid-sized daily....

Most of the 27 members of the fifth generation of the Ochs-Sulzberger family -- who are slated to inherit control of the New York Times Co. -- work as artists, musicians, academics, even fashion stylists. "You don't see a line of people in succession to run the joint," says a former Times exec.

IN his annual "State of the Times" address to employees yesterday, New York Times Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger painted a rosy picture of the company and its newest investor, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim - but Wall Street still seems skeptical. Slim, ranked by Forbes as the second-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $60 billion, on Tuesday disclosed that he had purchased 9.1 million Class A shares, which gave him 6.4 percent of the company stock. That makes him the third-largest stockholder who is not a member of the controlling Ochs-Sulzberger family. "He [Sulzberger] said that they...

Move over Warren Buffett. One of the world's richest men has decided to bet on newspapers, too. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú along with his family disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that they now own 9,100,000 Class A shares or 6.4% of the New York Times Co. The New York Times declined to comment. This makes the Slim family one of the company's largest Class A shareholders along with Harbinger Capital Partners. Harbinger owns a 20% stake in the company and two seats on the board held by Scott Galloway, founder and CIO of Firebrand Partners, and...

<p>New York Times Co. said Tuesday that its July revenue from continuing operations fell 10.1 percent this year as advertising revenue slipped 16.2 percent. Overall revenue dropped to $235.9 million in July from $262.3 million in July 2007, the publisher said.</p>

Pinch Sulzberger has taken perhaps the most recognizable media brand in the country and run it into the ground. Can the Gray Lady be saved?

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is racing to transform the embattled New York Times for the digital age. Is he up to the job? Corporate annual meetings are generally drowsy affairs—a pep talk by management, some PowerPoint graphics, a little predetermined voting, all topped off by a parade of cranks to the microphones to excoriate management about their pet causes. April’s annual gathering of shareholders in The New York Times Company certainly featured all of those ingredients, down to the codger who shuffled in late, grabbed the seat next to mine, and promptly dozed off. But beneath the surface routine there was...

<p>Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and his wife, Gail Gregg, have decided to separate, they said in a statement issued Friday.</p>

THE New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days. The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board. That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history.

The New York Times announced that it's all but a done deal that the paper will have to layoff staffers in the newsroom. The drop-dead deadline is fast approaching for the staffers in The New York Times newsroom to raise their hand and volunteer for a buyout. An internal memo from the paper's assistant managing editor, Bill Schmidt, just went out and said that "we expect" that the buyout numbers aren't looking good and that for the first time the paper will be forced to cut the newsroom through layoffs. "While layoffs have become all too common across our industry,...

The New York Times is always for higher taxes. But publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. doesn't relish paying Uncle Sam any more than he has to. The Post's Braden Keil reports "Pinch" just sold his duplex Central Park-fronting apartment at 1 W. 64th St. to his wife, Gail Gregg, for the relatively low price of $3.25 million, according to city transfers. When quizzed about the odd transaction, a Times spokeswoman said: "The sale was done for estate-planning purposes." Neighbors in the building include Madonna, who briefly put her like-sized duplex on the market for $6.75 million in 1997.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT - News) will eliminate 100 newsroom jobs, the company confirmed on Thursday, as it girds for a weaker economy and an overall decline in print advertising and circulation revenue. The company, which also publishes the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, said it will eliminate these jobs by not filling vacant positions, by offering buyouts and laying off staff, if necessary. The Times's currently employs 1,332 people in its newsroom, a spokeswoman said. New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told the newsroom on Thursday morning, according to a...

The New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday posted a 7 percent decline in revenue, dragged by poor real estate and retail advertising sales. Fourth-quarter net income was $53 million, or 37 cents a share, compared with a loss of $648 million, or $4.50 a share, in the fourth quarter last year when it took a large write-down on its New England group. Revenue fell 7.1 percent to $865.8 million. Excluding the write-down and other items from both periods, profit per share from continuing operations fell to 44 cents, compared with 46 cents a share a year...

The New York City Dept. of Buildings is expected to send inspectors to the recently completed New York Times building on West 40th Street and 8th Avenue Jan. 11 to determine what caused seven of the 52-story structure's windows to crack on Wednesday afternoon. The windows, according to the DOB, were located on the 22nd, 10th and sixth floors of the building. Two of the building's signature ceramic rods on the exterior of the 40th and 38th floors were damaged, as well. "Our engineers believe (Wednesday's) high winds were a contributing factor (to the damage)," said DOB spokeswoman Kate Lindquist....

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2008/01/04/the-nyt-bloomberg-merger-could-it-happen

Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to the announcement that William Kristol will be writing a weekly column in the New York Times: “William ‘the Bloody’ Kristol is a beady eyed warmonger.” “Worthless suck up Kristol should be cleaning toilets in public restrooms for his GOP ‘friends.’” “I will never, ever, buy another issue of the newspaper, I will never again be a subscriber to your newspaper and I will do my level best to avoid any purchases from any NY Times advertiser.” “If the New York Times is going to hire...

The Business Press Maven's head is bent in utter sorrow. Why this time? Well, all the way back on Monday, I was forced to lament the fact that sometimes it was better to just read a company's press release rather than the articles that follow it. As you'll recall, the watermelon-sized merger of Ingersoll Rand (IR) and Trane (TT) was announced just as Sunday night was turning into Monday, and since there were not many sober, experienced business journalists around in the middle of the night, what hit up on the wires for hours on end were regurgitations on the...

snip Their streamlined glass-and-steel forms proclaimed a faith in machine-age efficiency and an open, honest, democratic society. Newspaper journalism, too, is part of that history. Transparency, independence, the free flow of information, moral clarity, objective truth — these notions took hold and flourished in the last century at papers like The Times. To many this idealism reached its pinnacle in the period stretching from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War to Watergate, when journalists grew accustomed to speaking truth to power, and the public could still accept reporters as impartial observers. snip Maybe this accounts for the tower’s...

It's official. Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal's owner-in-waiting, is going to war against the New York Times and its controlling family, the Sulzbergers. He's repeatedly stated his intention to push the Journal even further into politics, culture and national affairs—editorial territory long dominated by the Old Gray Lady. But Murdoch wasn't always gunning to topple the Times. In fact, he actually envisioned himself as the paper's owner. It's hard to imagine Murdoch, long considered a political conservative, ever owning the Times. Over the years the paper has been Murdoch's foil and foe, criticized regularly by his New York Post...

<p>It should have been a good week for the New York Times-controlling Sulzberger family after they beat back a cantankerous shareholder, ending a two-year battle over the dual-class share system the company employs to keep the family in control of the newspaper publisher.</p>

Once again, the Watergate maxim that "the cover-up is worse than the crime" is proving valid. And Clark Hoyt, "public editor" (ombudsman) of the New York Times is playing the part of John Dean in what could be titled "All the Publisher's Men." The revelations about the MoveOn "betray us" ad contained in Hoyt's column today raise serious questions about the integrity of the company's management. Members of the Sulzberger/Ochs family who control the Times have even more reason to be gravely concerned the very survival of their patrimony is being jeopardized by incompetence or worse on the part of Pinch...

NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service on Monday changed its outlook on the New York Times Co. (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to negative, from stable, citing increased pressure on the publisher's advertising from other media as well as from a downturn in the housing market. A negative outlook indicates the company's debt is likely to be downgraded over the next 12 to 18 months. The New York Times is currently ranked "Baa1," the third-lowest investment grade rating. "The negative rating outlook results from increased pressure on the company's retail and classified advertising from cross media competition and...

After enduring a century and a half of change in Lower Manhattan, decrepit and anonymous, the birthplace of The New York Times is now being torn down, brick by brick. By an odd turn of history, the demolition of The Times’s oldest home occurred just as the company settles into its seventh and newest headquarters, a 52-story tower across Eighth Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Yesterday, a worker armed with an appropriately 19th-century demolition tool — a sledgehammer — sat astride the south wall of 113 Nassau Street, between Ann and Beekman Streets, pounding chunks of the structure...

It's Forward Into Battle!" That's how Newsweek describes the impending battle between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, once Rupert Murdoch is legally owner of the financial daily. There are all sorts of predictions about what will happen, particularly how Murdoch might change the Wall Street Journal, And what the New York Times will do to meet the challenge. Newsweek, at least, predicts “all-out war”. Others don't go quite so far, but there is agreement that Murdoch has lots of ideas for the Wall Street Journal once he takes over. If he accomplishes them all, he will...

Despite his remarks on coverage, some expect changes on the Journal's business side first. If the Gray Lady didn't have enough problems battling industrywide woes, now she has Rupert Murdoch to worry about. The media billionaire has made no secret of his desire to take aim at the New York Times once his News Corp. acquires Dow Jones & Co. and its flagship Wall Street Journal in a $5-billion deal expected to close this fall. Murdoch said during an earnings conference call last week that he wanted the financial newspaper to have "more coverage of national, international and nonbusiness news...

The Herald-Tribune is revamping its features sections and consolidating its Venice, North Port, Englewood and Port Charlotte operations, a move that will result in an unspecified number of layoffs. The media company will drop the daily Florida West section, adding more focused tabloid-size sections resembling Ticket. The consolidated southern operations will be based in Venice. With the consolidation, the Herald-Tribune will start new interactive Web sites geared toward allowing the public to share their news, photos and videos. Newspapers around the country have been trimming their print reports and expanding their Web coverage. In coastal Florida, that trend toward digital...

NEW YORK His Saturday business column for The New York Times (available online only via TimesSelect) mainly explores how the Bancroft family blew the deal with the News Corp. But Joseph Nocera closes it with a brief sit-down interview with new owner Rupert Murdoch at his headquarters in New York, just after the deal closes. “The first road to freedom,” Murdoch explains, after (like Nocera) removing his tie and relaxing, “is viability.” This refers to the Wall Street Journal making healthy profits again, thereby allowing it to remain editorial independent. There is no "or else" uttered but it may be...