New York Times Will Win in the Long Run

Shareholders of New York Times (NYT Quote) are deep in the red for the last several years, but if, during that time, someone had been handing out pennies every time the newspaper publisher's reporting was cited on television or in the blogosphere, they would be sitting on a fortune by now.

With the rise of the Internet, the Times, along with the rest of the newspaper industry, is losing touch with consumers. As people increasingly turn to television, online news aggregators, video sites and like-minded bloggers to digest the news of the day, many forward-looking investors are predicting the demise of the printed page and looking elsewhere for good investments.

But it's much harder to make the argument that the information purveyed by newspapers, particularly the Times, has lost its relevance. That's why the biggest threat to long-term shareholders of the company may be the test of wills that's unfolding on Wall Street over its dual-class share structure. ...