NY Times Seeks Rescue From Carlos Slim

Being worth $60 billion, Slim is the world’s second richest person. He bought a 6.4% common share stake in NYT co. in September 2008 and is open to invest more in the troubled newspaper.

The newspaper has to raise $400 million before May when its credit line expires. The recession has increased the paper’s troubles, which were already tremendous; it reported a 21% drop in ad revenue last year.

Although many papers are in trouble, the New York Times is largely to blame for its own problems. It has been mismanaged, and the general direction of the paper took a turn for the worse years ago. Where the paper’s editorial pages were liberal for decades but its news reports generally objective, it dropped all objectivity in recent years. The paper’s reporting became so biased that it was nicknamed “Obama’s newspaper” in 2008.

The NYT still has the potential to be one of the world’s leading and most respected newspapers. But it will have to change its approach to reporting if it wants to succeed. It will additionally have to adapt to changing times by making its online edition more profitable.

If it does, everyone will be happy, for it is in everyone’s interest to have a strong and objective newspaper doing investigative reporting other newspapers and blogs cannot afford.

By PoliGazette, used under Creative Commons.