The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Feb. 15

3. Newspaper Vigilantes United!

"There is nothing wrong with the New York Times Company that cannot be fixed with what is right with the New York Times."

So said Scott Galloway, Wall Street's latest warrior-poet, while promising to fix the woes of the newspaper industry in a letter to executives at the Gray Lady.

The latest shareholder activist being fended off by New York Times (NYT Quote), Galloway is a brand strategy guru with Firebrand Partners who has financial backing from hedge fund Harbinger Capital.

Scott Galloway models during a Johnnie Walker fashion show in 2006.

Harbinger, which is pushing to nominate four directors to the company's board, ratcheted up its campaign this week by disclosing Monday that its fund based in the Cayman Islands more than doubled its stake in New York Times to around 10%, making it the company's second-largest institutional shareholder. That came after the investor group met with the company's management in what it called a "productive and positive dialogue."

The Times fired back Tuesday by nominating two high-caliber candidates of its own to be new board members: Dawn Lepore, an eBay (EBAY Quote) director who is CEO of drugstore.com (DSCM Quote), and Robert Denham, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a law firm founded by Charlie Munger -- a top lieutenant for Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK-A Quote) Warren Buffett.

Unlike Hassan Elmasry, the fund manager from Morgan Stanley Investments whose previous efforts to shake up the Times failed, Galloway is trying to make nice with the Times, primarily by not pushing for an end to the company's dual-class share structure that gives the Ochs-Sulzberger family control over the newspaper publisher. But despite his warm and fuzzy approach, Galloway is a weight-lifting shareholder mercenary with a reputation for brash talk and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

"Galloway is not afraid of anybody or anything," says a longtime business associate who expressed admiration for him. "He's not the guy who shows up at board meetings for a free dinner wearing a blazer and pats the CEO on the back and says, 'Good job,' and collects some options."

Galloway stumbled into shareholder activism in 2004 when he was booted off the board of RedEnvelope (REDE Quote), an online retail outfit that he founded. He battled his way back onto the board two years later, but since then, the company's stock has plunged by 82%.

The last time he teamed up with Harbinger, Galloway won a board seat at Gateway in December 2006, when the stock was trading around $1.90. Subsequently, the stock tumbled as low as $1.12 before the computer seller was finally acquired by Acer last August for ... um ... $1.90 a share.

Dumb-o-meter score: 85. "There is nothing wrong with Gateway that can't be fixed with what's right with Gateway," Galloway said in a letter to Gateway management in 2006. Sound familiar?