Even the best come under pressure

 
Press The newspaper crisis in the USA does not stop at the New York Times, perhaps the best newspaper in the world.  
The New York Times' share price, which is omnipotent in the USA, has fallen from a record high of 53 dollars in 2002 to its current level of 19 dollars. The latest quarterly figures revealed a sad record, namely a ten percent drop in advertising revenue compared to the previous year. "We face further challenges for print advertising because of the poor economy," said Times CEO Janet Robinson. The main problem is that most newspapers cannot make up for the loss of print revenue through their online editions because marketers are not prepared to pay as much for an online ad as for a print ad. "Online ads are worth less than print ads because you don't know how long a reader will engage with an article online, and because marketers don't think much of the banner ads that still dominate," says Samuel Craig, a marketing professor at New York University.
The Times under publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has so far refused to introduce the same brutal cost-cutting measures as many other newspapers. Only 100 of the 1300 editorial jobs will be cut, many of them in the form of redundancies and retirements. However, in recent months the paper has come under strong pressure from hedge funds Harbiger Capital and Firebrand Partners, which together own around 15 percent of the shares. Their managers are demanding that the company divest itself of the loss-making Boston Globe and invest more in digital opportunities. Although the Times' board of directors is dominated by the Sulzberger publishing family, which owns the majority of votes, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. felt compelled to give the two financial investors two seats on the board to prevent further public attacks.
Another problem is Rupert Murdoch, who is upgrading the Wall Street Journal, which he has just acquired, on several levels in order to compete with the Times: He's pouring more money into coverage from abroad and the capital city of Washington, targeting the Times' traditional strengths. "He's going to shell out the money necessary to attack the Times' position as the leading daily," predicts former Times editor-in-chief Howell Raines. "There is no more important issue in American journalism than the future of the New York Times, and I don't think the paper is taking the Murdoch and takeover issue seriously enough."
Gerti Schön, New York
 
>More on the situation at the New York Times in the
Interview
with Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolf.