New York Times Will Win in the Long Run

Priced just above $23, shares of New York Times have lost half their value over the last three years, indicating the low expectations that investors have for the company. With the U.S. auto industry and the real estate market in a deep slump, things are bound to get worse as the industry's painful transformation accelerates.

But if the Times were to give in to short-term pressures and take an axe to its newsgathering operations, it could quickly destroy its place as the leading source of the kind of fact-based, original reporting on world events that still drives the daily news cycle. Losing that dominance could be disastrous for the company.

"There aren't many places in this country that actually generate that kind of reporting anymore," says Tifft. "Everybody in the media still feeds on what quality newspapers produce. They set the agenda everyday for everyone else, so why would they give that up? From a business point of view, it doesn't make any sense to cut back on that for the Times, because there will always be a demand for it, whether it's on paper or on the Web."

In this respect, the Sulzbergers stand out from the rest of the industry. As impatient shareholders have created turmoil at other places like Knight-Ridder and Tribune (TRB Quote), the Times has kept its organization, including its foreign news bureaus, largely intact. While large editorial cuts were recently made at the Globe, New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis says editorial staffing levels at the flagship newspaper are right where they were two years ago.