Overview
This profile considers the New York Times group.
It covers -
- introduction
- the group
- holdings
- the Boston Globe
- studies
Introduction
The New York Times group, built around the newspaper of the same name, has sales of around US$4 billion a year. 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.
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) 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. 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: Public Affairs 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