The Times Dies

For so long, mine was the lonely and vilified voice saying that the New York Times was doomed--vilified most hotly by people at the Times. But the end of the New York Times has now become a conventional forecast, taken up most recently by my friend Michael Hirschorn in the Atlantic.

I don't know of anyone now--at least anyone who isn't employed by the Times--who believes that the business, as currently organized and managed, can survive. If it had some chance of ignominiously limping along before the recession, that's gone with its entire advertising base in freefall.

Hirschorn's concise, by-the-numbers analysis is more precise: The Times could go out of business in May. That's when $400 million of the Times' $1 billion in debt comes due--and it only has $46 million in the bank.

Hirschorn remains, however, a Times believer, or a believer in the thing the Times represents--some DNA that he sees being preserved and having a future in the new world.

Continue reading at newser.com

Comments

[pointedly]

The New York Times can't die fast enough as far as I'm concerned. The disastrous enmeshment we, citizens of the USA, have with Iraq is in great part the responsibility of the NYT, the 'Newspaper of Record' which made dupes of us all, and complicit in a horrible crime.

I haven't picked up a copy of the New York Times in 3 years.

[glorialovelace]

If the Times folds -- and I think this is wishful thinking on Wolff's part -- where are you going to get your news from? Where do you get it from now?

[Bluedanube]

The Guardian, the internet, CBC, BBC, etc..

[thewho77]

There is no loss. They MUST go online to survive, and quit printing it on paper, thus killing trees for no good reason. They crossed the Rubicon when Judith Miller was a cheerleader for Cheney and Jason Blair just made stories up. GOOD RIDDANCE

[glorialovelace]

The Times isn't the only paper to have been duped by a Jayson Blair. A while back, the Washington Post's Janet Cooke actually won a Pulitzer for a fabricated story. After she was exposed, she had to give the Pulitzer back.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/day/04_17_2001.html

[elphdriver]

I can't imagine not getting my Sunday Times delivered to my door, a weekend ritual is curling up with my coffee and the paper for a nice couple hour read. I think they need to stop giving away the whole show online and make people subscribe like they used to, or go offline totally. If you are a fan of any of their columnists (or the Book Review, or any other part of the paper) subscribe! It is about $5 to have it delivered here in Minneapolis - a bargain for all the analysis and ideas.

[rad21]

To my analysis, it is 1 billion dollar debt and the interest on the debt that is 'killing' the Times. This is another example of bad decisions made by a highly paid top management of a US corporation.

[Paul]

Exactly.

[djwfutbol]

I hate getting old. This is sad and, Lord knows, I have not always been a fan of the old girl but, damn it, we need some stability somewhere.

[mytwosense]

So all the news that's fit to print isn't gonna be printed much longer? Boo hoo. Once they began to curtail the amount of investigative reporting and international news, well, they lost my subscription. Remember that movie The Paper, starring Glenn Close, Robert Duvall and Michael Keaton. With Spalding gray as the pompous, provincial rival editor. Well THAT was the NYC, albeit a humorous take on the Gray Lady. So not only does art imitate life, now life imitates art. With a big I told you so from Hollywood. And they say the entertainment industry is pro-liberal. Hah!

[FairTalk]

The Times is totally biased, and has even reverted to name calling. It is even banned in China. Won't be long now. We do not have time to vet Time "news" when we can get unbiased news on the internet. Perhaps CBS will be next?

[glorialovelace]

"We do not have time to vet Time "news" when we can get unbiased news on the internet."

You're joking, right?

[Donegal]

Until the last press stops rolling, I don't think people will really understand the importance newspapers have played not only in providing us (as well as radio, TV, and internet sites like this one) with news, but in keeping those bozos in the government in line. Stop me before I break into an old Joni Mitchell song.

[Paul]

Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
'Til its gone

[Citizen54]

Or, as Bob Marley and folks down in the Caribbean say:

You never miss the water
Til the well run dry

[quantumspin]

The Times lost its news credibility when it:

1)promoted the Iraq war (Judy Miller)
2)hired reporters who faked news stories
3)held off the NSA wiretapping story until Bush got elected a second time
4)Turned the Magazine into Parade
5)hired William Kristol
6)put Clinton attack pieces on the front page

...we had Fox News for all of the above, so who needed the Times?

If the Times just told the truth and did real journalism, it would not matter if it was on paper or on line.
As it is now, the Times is not a 'must read' unless you want BushCo/corporate propaganda and fluff pieces.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

Yep. I used to regularly go to a magazine store back in the 90's and every. single. day i'd walk past the Times display and see Clinton and Lewinski on the front cover. Didn't see any reason to buy it then, or now.

I used to think, I still think, Clinton was being roasted for NOT invading Iraq as per the Clean Break plan.

And Bill Kristol...­how low can you go?!?

Bye bye Times. Thanks for nothing.

[Pulemerci]

The Times lost whatever credibility it had. What with Jason Blair making up stories, their complete bias to the Left and having a theater critic write editorials, no wonder they are losing readership and advertisers left and right. I believe the S&P rated the Times as junk bond status.

[Subtext]

Posters should be careful what they wish for. The NY Times is perhaps the last reasonable paper-of-record. It's been weakened by op-ed assignments to people like Kristol, and Republican­-pandering­-disguised­-as-journa­lism by folks like Judith Miller, but it's still the only source for writers and thinkers like Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. And perhaps the best film and theatre reviews, this side of the New Yorker.
The country will suffer if we're left with media controlled merely by the Murdochs of the world, who've taken journalism profits and disseminated their propaganda through all forms of media. We've already seen what the lack of responsible reporting has done to this country. (Who understood the Saudi and al Qaeda dangers while we were talking about blue dresses? who understood the risks presented by CDOs while we were focused on San Diego wife-killers and missing girls in the Bahamas?)
Let's root for the Times, encourage aggressive reporting, critical thinking, nervy opinions, and also encourage them to morph into an internet news source - with their streaming media, brand name, their talent base and a strong editorial staff, I could see them easily becoming a web-based 'news-station', for lack of a better word.
Let's not be cynical.
Let's instead see how the best of what's left can be supported.

[JulieSA]

Vicki Iseman better hurry and get her lawsuit going, or there won't be anything left with which to pay her damages.

[glorialovelace]

The New York Times has libel insurance. All newspapers have it.

[Dukedraven]

How the mighty have fallen. I remember when you couldn't do a college term paper without looking up the New York Times on microfiche. I don't know what they use today, or what will be the prime periodical source in the future.

[blooddoc]

Where I live the (only) newspaper is biased to the right and facing similar financial issues. No one can say where this demise of the print media is going to leave us, but as someone who likes occasionally to hold a newspaper or book while reading - rather than get it off an LCD screen - I'm worried.

[MTGradwell]

It's a sign of the times.