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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile considers the New York Times group.
It covers -
introduction
The New York Times group, built around the newspaper of
the same name, has sales of around US$4 billion a year.
As of 2000 the group includes newspapers, cable television,
radio and television broadcasting, magazines and paper
mills.
the group
The group's flagships are the New York Times (established
in 1856 and acquired by forbears of the current owners,
the Sulzberger family, in 1896), the Boston Globe
(acquired in 1993) and the International Herald Tribune
(whose predecessor was founded
in 1835). Like peers such as the Washington Post
it followed the usual route for diversification, buying
broadcast and cable television, wood pulp and paper operations,
magazines and regional or community newspapers.
As the chronology here suggests,
however, the Times has been a more enthusiastic
practitioner of churn
- in some cases disposing of interests after only a year.
It has recently disposed of its magazine interests, a
sale that echoed the disposal of book interests in the
1980s. The group sold its Australian interests some time
ago.
As of late 2001 the group includes the two major newspapers,
the Worcestor Telegram & Gazette, 15 smaller dailies,
a multimedia arm, six television stations and two FM radio
stations. Five of the stations were ranked No. 1 in their
market; the others were ranked as second.
By 2006 the group had expanded to nine television stations
(in Des Moines, Fort Smith, Huntsville, Memphis, Moline,
Norfolk, Scranton and two stations in Oklahoma City).
At that time it announced plans to sell the stations,
which accounted for about 4% of the company's overall
revenue. Expected revenue from the stations was US$150
million, with an operating profit in 2006 of US$33 million.
In January 2007 the Times announced sale its tv stations
to Oak Hill Capital Partners for US$575 million and sale
of radio station WQEW to Disney for US$40 million.
The group has stakes in print and electronic joint ventures
with other groups and part ownership of paper manufacturing
operations.
The extended Sulzberger family has most of the voting
stock in the company but only a small economic stake.
holdings
An
indication of the shape of the group is here.
the Boston Globe
The Boston Globe was founded in 1872 by retailer
Eben Jordan (1822) - founder of Jordan Marsh - and five
other Boston businessmen with an investment of US$150,000.
That capital was burnt in the first year: Jordan formed
a partnership with General Charles Taylor (1845-1921)
in 1873. Taylor became trustee of the Jordan estate in
1895 and a Taylor family member served as publisher for
the following 125 years. Charles Taylor acquired the Boston
Pilgrims (later the Red Sox) and built Fenway Park in
1912.
The Globe was started as a daily, morning-only
newspaper, with a Sunday edition being launched in 1877.
The associated Boston Evening Globe was launched
in 1888 and ran until 1979.
The Globe was a private company until 1973 when it became
the flagship of Affiliated Publications, under Taylor
family control. Affiliated's interests grew to include
television and radio stations, magazines (BPI Communications),
the newspapers, cable television and mobile phones (later
sold to McCaw Cellular Communications). In 1993 it was
acquired by the New York Times Company.
BPI embodied the 1984 buy-out of Billboard Publications
(centred on Billboard magazine and including
seven other specialty magazines, 15 annual directories,
four book imprints and two book clubs). It was acquired
by Affiliated Publications in 1986 for US$100 million,
going on to buy The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek,
Architecture and launch metrics specialist Broadcast
Data Systems. Most of BPI's equity was acquired by management
in 1991 before it was acquired by VNU
in 1994.
studies
David Halberstam's classic The Powers That Be
(New York: Knopf 1979) is a picture by the leading US
journalist of the Washington Post, CBS,
New York Times and LA Times at the peak
of the 'television age'. It is complemented by Harrison
Salisbury's Without Fear or Favour: An Uncompromising
Look at the New York Times (New York: Times 1981).
Ken Auletta's gossipy Backstory (New York: Penguin
2004) and Arthur Gelb's City Room (New York:
Putnam 2003).
It is greatly superior to the Paper Tigers (London:
Heinemann 1993) by Nicholas Coleridge, supplying chatty
profiles of the Sulzbergers, Rothermeres, Grahams, Coxs,
Aga Khans and less prominent nabobs, and Chris Argyris'
Behind the Front Page: Organizational Self-Renewal
in a Metropolitan Newspaper (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
1974). Piers Brendon, in The Life & Death
of the Press Barons (London: Secker & Warburg
1982), pronounced the barons dead; we have suggested elsewhere
on this site that the species survives and is disguised
by better tailors.
David Rudenstine's The Day the Presses Stopped: A History
of The Pentagon Papers Case (Berkeley: Uni of California
Press 1996) is an excellent introduction to the interplay
between beancounters, proprietors, journos and lawyers
in dealing with 'national interest' disputes.
The NY Times has collected numerous corporate and
family biographies, of which the most approachable are
probably The Trust: The Private & Powerful Family
Behind the New York Times (New York: Little Brown
1999) by Susan Tifft & Alex Jones and The Kingdom
& The Power (New York: Random House 1969) by Gay
Talese.
Gerald Johnson's An Honorable Titan: A Biographical
Study of Adolph S Ochs (New York: Harper & Bros 1946)
has a period flavour, as does Meyer Berger's The Story
of the New York Times, 1851-1951 (New York: Simon
& Schuster 1951). Ochs (1858-1935) supposedly quipped
- with some justice - that
if
a newspaper prints a sex crime, it's smut, but when
The New York Times prints it, it's a sociological
study.
Iphigene:
Memoirs of Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger (New York: Dodd
Mead 1981) by Susan Dryfoos is stolid and reputedly recycled
from earlier interviews. The Paper's Paper: A Reporter's
Journey through the Archives of the New York Times
(New York: Times Books 1996) by Richard Shepherd lives
up to the title. For the thirties and forties see Buried
by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important
Newspaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2005) by Laurel Leff.
Edwin Diamond's Behind the Times (New York: Villard
1993) presents an insightful portrait of the Grey Lady
'in crisis' - from a strategic perspective we wonder whether
all great newspapers are perpetually in crisis. Hard
News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning
for American Media (New York: Random House 2004)
by Seth Mnookin looks at recent brouhaha.
Among insider accounts and biographies we recommend Turner
Catledge's My Life & The Times (New York: Harper
& Row 1971), Max Frankel's The Times of My Life
and My Life with The Times (New York: Random 1999),
Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop (New York: Farrar Straus
Giroux 2005) by Joseph Lelyveld, James Reston's Deadline:
A Memoir (New York: Times 1991), Russell Baker's Good
Times (New York: Morrow 1989), Malcolm Browne's Muddy
Boots & Red Socks: A Reporter's Life (New York:
NY Times Books 1993) and The Man Who Invented Fidel:
Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York
Times (New York: PublicAffairs 2006) by Anthony DePalma.
For the Globe see the eulogistic Charles H. Taylor,
builder of the Boston Globe, on the fiftieth anniversary
of his editorship, 1873-1923 (Boston: Morgan 1923)
by James Morgan
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