NY Times going in the dumper – firing 500 people

The NY Times is going in the dumper – yesterday
they announced the firing of 500 employees. AND three years ago their stock
price was $47.05. Yesterday it was 31.13. The S & P 500 over the same time
frame has risen just under 45%. The math is bad for the Gray Lady.

Here’s
what the Company had to say: In a memo to staffers, company chairman Arthur O.
Sulzberger, Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson wrote: "We regret that we will see many
of our colleagues leave the Company; it is a painful process for all of
us."

How fair is this? The Sulzbergers are centi-millionaires – in fact
billionaires. A quick back of the envelope calculation says that 500 employees
times $70,000 a year in salary and benefits (and that salary figure is probably
high) costs $35,000,000 a year.

This is chump change to the Sulzbergers –
it’s probably the interest on a few of their treasury bonds. So why don’t they
show some good example to the rest of the wealthy people in America and put a
kind of voluntary "Tax" on their wealth by putting the money into the Company to
save these jobs?? "Painful process" indeed. Now that they are charging $50 a
year to access the NY Times "Crown Jewels" – their op ed writers Krugman, Dowd,
et al, they are sure to make up their shortfall in no time at all.

The
NYT needs to hire Roger Ailes to get this mess cleaned up. Or maybe KKKarl
Rove.

My brother Phil says that the pink slipped employees "They were
fact checkers, many of whom worked for Krugman. Not needed."

I wish I’d
thought of that line.