In the wake of the other day’s “anonymously sourced” (at the NY Times that has often been a euphemism for reportorial fantasies) Front Page story claiming that two anonymous sources thought it might have been possible that they “kinda, sorta” suspected that John McCain (then running in the GOP Primary for President) "may or may not have” had an affair with then 32 y/o Washington, D.C. lobbyist Vicki Iseman.
Yikes rumor is now “news”! The NY Times has finally sunk to “National Enquirer status.”
Worse still, the “investigators” for the story have found no occasions on which Senator John McCain voted favorably for the things Ms Iseman lobbied for.
Drats...and double drats!
Even worse yet, is that since 2006, New York Times Co.'s public shareholders have sent the company a signal that they want changes in its dual-class stock structure.
At a recent meeting, 42% of voting holders of Class A stock refused to vote for the New York Times Company.
The NY Times Company has come under fire by shareholders, including major stock owner, Morgan Stanley’s portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry, for its two-tiered share structure, which puts the majority of power in the hands of the holders of the Class B shares. Elmasry has long charged that the dual-class system strays from the best practices of corporate governance, and that it doesn't give public shareholders enough opportunity to demand drastic changes at a company whose stock price has been weak for a prolonged period.
Just last April, influential investment advisor firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) advised that NYT Company’s Class A shareholders to withhold votes for the four directors that are up for election later this month. The Class B shareholders—those are largely Sulzberger family members—control the votes for the remaining nine directors on the board. So by telling Class A shareholders to withhold their votes, ISS is, obviously, telling the non-family shareholders to tell the Times that they don't like the way the company is being run.
ISS is not happy with the makeup of the Times' board, nothing that Vice-Chairman Michael Golden (Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s cousin) "is among the most highly compensated executive officers of the company"; his sister, Lynn Dolnick, is also a director on the board.
ISS is also not thrilled by having Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in the dual roles of Chairman and Publisher, noting that it "further disenfranchises Class A shareholders by vesting the power of Chairman in an insider, Mr. Sulzberger... He is ultimately accountable to himself, both as Chairman and as a Class B shareholder. Neither he nor other members of the management team is accountable to the company's Class A shareowners in any meaningful way."
The Boardroom’s primary problem with the Sulzberger debacle has been flagging profitability. While the print media has been plagued by a mass-migration of readers from print to internet, BUT the N. Y. Times is on the internet, and it’s not that Leftists don’t do well on the internet, as some of the biggest daily blogs on the web are hard left.
And it’s not economic or demographic conditions either. US population is growing at a rate of almost 3 million per year and the economy has been expanding rapidly since 2003 (despite the Times predictions to the contrary). And it’s not local demographics, The New York Times, like the New York Post (which has seen its readership skyrocket over the same period) are both headquartered in New York City.
Many people, from pundits to investors have begun to consider that if the problem isn’t the global environment, the local environment, the labor environment, technology, the subscription model or regional conditions, perhaps it’s the newspaper.
Just ten days ago The New York Times Co. nominated two outside candidates to replace two directors after shareholders called for changes to the company's board and strategy.
Robert Denham, one of the nominees, is a partner in the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and Dawn Lepore is the chief executive officer of Drugstore.com Inc., an online provider of health and beauty products, New York Times said yesterday in a statement.
The two Hedge Funds that have been pushing the family-run NY Times for change, put out a statement that, according to Robert Willis (chief investment officer of Willis Investment Counsel in Gainesville, Georgia, which owns 500,000 New York Times shares), read in part, "These nominees yesterday offer a nice mixture but that doesn't satisfy the need to have directors that are more objective and perhaps not inclined to do everything from the family shareholders' perspective."
In the wake of the recent McCain smear, this could be a “do-or-die” move for either the NY Times or John McCain. IF the NY Times cannot significantly substantiate that embarrassingly “anonymously sourced” story, there may well be a corporate mutiny in the boardroom of the NY Times!
Yikes rumor is now “news”! The NY Times has finally sunk to “National Enquirer status.”
Worse still, the “investigators” for the story have found no occasions on which Senator John McCain voted favorably for the things Ms Iseman lobbied for.
Drats...and double drats!
Even worse yet, is that since 2006, New York Times Co.'s public shareholders have sent the company a signal that they want changes in its dual-class stock structure.
At a recent meeting, 42% of voting holders of Class A stock refused to vote for the New York Times Company.
The NY Times Company has come under fire by shareholders, including major stock owner, Morgan Stanley’s portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry, for its two-tiered share structure, which puts the majority of power in the hands of the holders of the Class B shares. Elmasry has long charged that the dual-class system strays from the best practices of corporate governance, and that it doesn't give public shareholders enough opportunity to demand drastic changes at a company whose stock price has been weak for a prolonged period.
Just last April, influential investment advisor firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) advised that NYT Company’s Class A shareholders to withhold votes for the four directors that are up for election later this month. The Class B shareholders—those are largely Sulzberger family members—control the votes for the remaining nine directors on the board. So by telling Class A shareholders to withhold their votes, ISS is, obviously, telling the non-family shareholders to tell the Times that they don't like the way the company is being run.
ISS is not happy with the makeup of the Times' board, nothing that Vice-Chairman Michael Golden (Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s cousin) "is among the most highly compensated executive officers of the company"; his sister, Lynn Dolnick, is also a director on the board.
ISS is also not thrilled by having Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in the dual roles of Chairman and Publisher, noting that it "further disenfranchises Class A shareholders by vesting the power of Chairman in an insider, Mr. Sulzberger... He is ultimately accountable to himself, both as Chairman and as a Class B shareholder. Neither he nor other members of the management team is accountable to the company's Class A shareowners in any meaningful way."
The Boardroom’s primary problem with the Sulzberger debacle has been flagging profitability. While the print media has been plagued by a mass-migration of readers from print to internet, BUT the N. Y. Times is on the internet, and it’s not that Leftists don’t do well on the internet, as some of the biggest daily blogs on the web are hard left.
And it’s not economic or demographic conditions either. US population is growing at a rate of almost 3 million per year and the economy has been expanding rapidly since 2003 (despite the Times predictions to the contrary). And it’s not local demographics, The New York Times, like the New York Post (which has seen its readership skyrocket over the same period) are both headquartered in New York City.
Many people, from pundits to investors have begun to consider that if the problem isn’t the global environment, the local environment, the labor environment, technology, the subscription model or regional conditions, perhaps it’s the newspaper.
Just ten days ago The New York Times Co. nominated two outside candidates to replace two directors after shareholders called for changes to the company's board and strategy.
Robert Denham, one of the nominees, is a partner in the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and Dawn Lepore is the chief executive officer of Drugstore.com Inc., an online provider of health and beauty products, New York Times said yesterday in a statement.
The two Hedge Funds that have been pushing the family-run NY Times for change, put out a statement that, according to Robert Willis (chief investment officer of Willis Investment Counsel in Gainesville, Georgia, which owns 500,000 New York Times shares), read in part, "These nominees yesterday offer a nice mixture but that doesn't satisfy the need to have directors that are more objective and perhaps not inclined to do everything from the family shareholders' perspective."
In the wake of the recent McCain smear, this could be a “do-or-die” move for either the NY Times or John McCain. IF the NY Times cannot significantly substantiate that embarrassingly “anonymously sourced” story, there may well be a corporate mutiny in the boardroom of the NY Times!
