The question I couldn’t get away from in reading this article about the trials and tribulations of the New York Times was how in the world can you cut the number of people on the payroll in half and end up with the same size payroll you had when you started? I guess the second question is whether there’s a niche for a national journal of opinion that targets people who live on the Upper West Side or wish they did?
I think there probably is but it won’t be able to pay big salaries to its top management and its name columnists. Which may be the point of the whole enterprise at this point. It also won’t be able to service a lot of debt, something I’ve mentioned as a problem for the newspaper industry more broadly.
The Times had better watch out. Carlos Slim is a man who’s been known to cut his losses pretty suddenly.
If I were super wealthy, I wouldn’t mind having a small place in a decent neighborhood in Manhattan, for what would be frequent trips. Manhattan is awesome, but I couldn’t image wanting to live there as a primary residence.
I’ll need to ask Annie (my friend who lives in the Village) why she likes it so much next time I talk to her. But it’s just too damned crowded for me.
Carlos makes money off immigration from Mexico. As long as he can use the Times to push for amnesty and more and more Mexicans coming to America, it’ll be worth it.
Whoa. That’s ugly.
I suspect you were skimming and didn’t note that severance accounts for payroll holding up, as it couldn’t be classified as a restructuring expense.
Wrt liquidity, I wasn’t alarmed but I don’t do quick ratio happy crap and LBOs are my benchmark. The Moody’s rating says it all. Bet the NYTs wishes they were as asleep and incompetent as claimed by the NYTs after the housing crisis.
But the most alarming thing is that their business model is outdated and all the cost cutting in the world won’t change that. I wonder if mgmt or Caelos Slim can arrive at a financial equilibrium without destroying the “content.” That’s hard. The length of that runway might indicate that zero debt is the right number. Only slight hyperbole. Niching is the usual strategy, but somehow the New York Upper West Side Times just doesn’t have the same ring……..