| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Economy |
| NYT Co. Credit Rating Sinks |
| 2005-09-24 |
| It's been a bad week for the New York Times Co. – one day after announcing that it would cut 500 jobs over the coming months, the company learned that Standard & Poor's Rating Service has put its long-term debt on "credit watch with negative implications." "The Credit Watch listing reflects New York Times' lower earnings guidance due to a softer than expected advertising revenue climate," said S&P credit analyst Donald Wong. The company had about $1.3 billion in total debt at the end of June, the New York Post reports. The job cuts came on top of 200 layoffs earlier this year at the company, which publishes several other newspapers – including the Boston Globe – in addition to the Times. The flagship Old Gray Lady will see 45 jobs axed in the new round of cuts. The company’s credit ratings are unchanged at the moment, but S&P said it will review its long-term ratings after an evaluation of the firm’s operating and financial strategies. (Newspapers of the NYT Co.): NYT; Boston Globe; Worcester Telegram & Gazette; Sarasota Herald-Tribune; The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, CA; The Ledger, Lakeland, FL; Star-News, Wilmington, NC; Herald-Journal, Spartanburg, SC; Star-Banner, Ocala, FL; The Gainesville Sun, Gainesville, FL; The Tuscaloosa News, Tuscaloosa, AL; TimesDaily, Florence, AL; The Gadsden Times, Gadsden, AL; Times-News, Hendersonville, NC; The Courier, Houma, LA; The Dispatch, Lexington, NC; Daily Comet, Thibodaux, LA; Petaluma Argus-Courier, Petaluma, CA. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #16 heh heh - waiting with baited breath for the press release touting the numbers |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-24 16:33 |
| #15 Frank - Here's Mickey Kaus' take. It doesn't look good so far. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-09-24 16:07 |
| #14 Will also be interesting in how that pay-for-crap-from MoDo, Krugman, Rich, et al goes. I bet they lose their ass |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-24 14:46 |
| #13 No Bobby, that's how they pad the subscription numbers for the accounting office. Its all Hollyweird bookkeeping and the people who are suppose to vouch for the numbers are about as interested in real numbers as Arthur Anderson. |
| Posted by: Chineck Angitch6709 2005-09-24 13:05 |
| #12 Well, the NYT was all up and down my street yesterday, and I know I didn't subscribe! Maybe that's how they get their numbers up - they give away freebies trying to gain circulation? Must be desperate! (One can only hope!) |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-09-24 13:00 |
| #11 Net income of $330.31 million on revenue of $3.33 billion. Not bad at all (the financials, not the content). |
| Posted by: DMFD 2005-09-24 12:57 |
| #10 What Frank said. NYT is going down. The NYT must be destroyed. |
| Posted by: Marcus Porcius Cato 2005-09-24 12:55 |
| #9 right, ZF - if you believe their figures. I don't, and they will pay the price when realistic subscription numbers come out/ad revenue drops to what it should be, just ask the LA Times |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-24 12:14 |
| #8 I wouldn't get too carried away here. NYT is a very profitable company. More profitable by far than Dow Jones and Co., which publishes the Wall Street Journal*. And certainly more profitable than either the Washington Times or the New York Post, both of which are losing money and have lost money for years. Most of the liberal media are run like businesses - for shareholder benefit - and are immensely profitable. Profitability is declining because advertisers are diverting their ad dollars to the internet - there is pretty much a fixed pool of ad dollars and more for the internet means less for radio, tv and print media. Is this good or bad? When you consider that most of the large internet players provide content sourced from the liberal media (MSN, Yahoo, Google, Fox News), I don't think there's anything to celebrate as yet. * 8.8% margin vs 5.9% for Dow Jones and Co. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-09-24 12:06 |
| #7 Thats no Lady..... Old grey shrew? |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-09-24 11:59 |
| #6 Normally I don't like getting joy out of other pain, but in this case it has been LONG in coming and richly deserved. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-09-24 11:32 |
| #5 That's before the s**t hits the fan with the creative bookkeeping the MSM has been using to pump their subscription numbers. Think the MSM sharks will eat their own using the same standards they applied to Worldcom and Enron executives? Watch for advertiser groups to sue for misrepresentation of subscription data that the papers used to set ad rates. |
| Posted by: Chineck Angitch6709 2005-09-24 11:25 |
| #4 Side note - my buddy's the union president at the Boston Globe. While he was discussing the (then pending) situation with the company's management, they sent the e-mail out notifying the union members of the layoffs. In other words, they sandbagged him; he got out of the meeting almost an hour after the e-mail was sent; a lot of the union members were (probably still are) pissed because he didn't rapidly respond to the situation. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-09-24 11:17 |
| #3 Glad to see S&P finally catching up with Rantburgers, Lizardoids, etc. We haven't given the NYT any credit in years. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-09-24 11:09 |
| #2 Thats no Lady..... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-09-24 10:52 |
| #1 ...And yet, they refuse to understand WHY the Gray Lady is on a steady and quickening slide towards tabloidom. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2005-09-24 10:46 |