The (N.Y.) Times They Are A-Changin'

It has been a tough decade for the venerable New York Times. After winning a record seven Pulitzer Prizes for post-9/11 coverage that exemplified the great journalism the newspaper has produced for 150 years, it has been pretty much all downhill.

To be sure, the Times has been buffeted by market forces beyond its control, but its problems are substantially of its own doing, including scandals involving reporters Jayson Blair and Judith Miller and other ethical lapses, forays into purple prose that would have been unthinkable in the past, and abject unobjectivity. And behind the scenes there has been a battle royal over whether the paper is being properly served by the Sulzberger family, the majority shareholder.

The answer to that question according to brokerage giant Morgan Stanley, is a resounding "no" as the Times second largest shareholder this week dumped its entire $183 million stake in the Gray Lady.

Times stock dropped to the lowest it has been in a decade, but in a commentary for ABC News entitled "Silicon Insider: How The New York Times Fell Apart," Michael S. Malone says that the actual damage is probably even larger than that.

He writes that the Morgan Stanley sell-off had been expected since April after Hassam Elmasry, managing director of Morgan's Investment Management Group, failed in his attempt to challenge the Sulzberger family's iron grip on the Times.

Malone says that on the surface, the battle appears to be all about power. After all, the Sulzbergers have run the Times for several generations, with family scion Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., widely viewed as a lightweight in a heavyweight job, currently at the helm.

But, says Malone:

"When B-school students a half-century from now read the case study about the 'death' of newspapers, it will be the New York Times they read about.

"As hard as may be for younger readers of this column to believe, twenty years ago, the New York Times was unquestionably the newspaper of record for the United States and (with the London Times) for much of the rest of the world. It had the most famous reporters and columnists, its coverage set the standard for all other news, and its opinions, delivered ex cathedra from the upper floors of the Gray Lady on 43rd Street set the topics of this country's political debate.

"Incredibly, almost every bit of that power has been squandered over the last two decades. It's been a long time since anyone considered the Times to be anything but the newspaper of opinion for anyone but the residents of a few square miles of midtown Manhattan. Indeed, about all the newspaper has left of the old days under 'Pinch's' dad, Arthur 'Punch' Sulzberger, is that old Times imperiousness -- earned back then, and more than a little absurd today."

Malone argues that the decline in the Times' reputation would have occurred without the emergence of the Internet and traces the turning point to the early 1990s when the paper began to more prominently display on its front page opinion pieces and features.

I happen to think that was a welcome change, but not Malone:

"At first, this was dismissed as a mere pandering to the changing tastes of a readership raised on television and gonzo reporting. But it was a first glimpse of the pandering to a supposedly hipper, more sophisticated audience that would become pandemic across the Times' pages under the threat of the Internet age.

"At about the same time, I got an early glimpse of how the Times would mishandle the technology side of its business as well. One day, several years after I'd stopped writing my column for the paper, I received a letter from the Times demanding that I retroactively sign over all electronic rights to my stories and columns on file at the newspaper.

" . . . This controlling attitude towards its content -- the antithesis of the desires of the providers of that content, who wanted to maximize readership and impact -- only grew more virulent in the face of the growing Web revolution and its successful movement towards open content."

Malone notes that the Times had plenty of company in trying to enforce an unworkable business model, but made another mistake which it alone could make and ultimately led to the Morgan Stanley stock dump and Times stock selloff:

"Most newspapers adopted the always dangerous strategy of trying to become more like one's competitors rather than establishing the defensible position of being even more true to oneself. Like most newspapers, the Times decided to become more timely, more hip, and more judgmental than the electronic media -- when it should have become better reported, more objective, and better written; professionalism being the one arena where the new competitors would have a hard time competing.

"What made the Times' decision not to pursue this strategy particularly stupid was that it was, after all, 'America's newspaper of record', a role in which it justly reveled. But you can't hold that title while pandering to the political and cultural views of readers on the Upper West Side. And you can't claim ‘all the news that's fit to print’ when you neglect to notice that an American soldier in Iraq just won the Medal of Honor. In the old days, if the Times didn't cover it, it didn't happen. That insulation is long gone: if the Times doesn't cover it, the blogosphere will -- and millions of readers will starting wondering about the judgment and biases of the New York Times."

Forgive me, but I get a little touchy when I read pieces like Malone's because he makes an assumption that I find way off base -- That the Times and newspapers in general should be run like any other capitalist venture, be it the manufacture of widgets or running a trucking company.

I get touchy because I watched my beloved Knight Ridder go down the tubes because its stock price became more important than the quality of its newspapers. That also is at work at the Times, and it's a frickin' shame.

I have a second problem, as well: Implicit in Malone’s indictment is that the Times should not have changed in some fundamental ways and should have remained the newspaper of record. That's silly.

Incidentally, the Times "isn't covering the fire in its own building," according to blogger Don Surber, who is a vocal part of the peanut gallery who would like nothing more than see the newspaper founder.

That's a little too strong for me, but the Times' own story on the Morgan Stanley bombshell raised more questions than it answered, and included an offensive "no comment" from the paper's own spokeswoman.