Now THIS is a quagmire ...

[Clever Login Name]

Even in the liberal echo chambers of Boston and New York, they can't convince enough people to buy their rag or advertise in it. Perhaps the NYT should immediately withdraw from the newspaper business.

New York Times Reports 4Q Loss of $648M

Jan 31 9:26 AM US/Eastern

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Times Co. posted a $648 million loss for the fourth quarter on Wednesday as it absorbed an $814.4 million charge to write down the value of its struggling New England properties, The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
The company said the non-cash charge reflected declines in current and projected results at the newspapers, which have been hit hard by the consolidations of key advertisers in the New England area as well as greater competition from online media.

The company originally paid $1.1 billion for the Globe in 1993 and $296 million for the Worcester paper in 2000.

The Times reported a loss amounting to $4.50 a share for the October- December period. It earned $63.1 million, or 43 cents a share, a year ago.

Results at the Times' Boston-area properties have been slumping badly in the past year, amid a tough economic climate there and the consolidation of key advertisers including the retailers Macy's, part of Federated Department Stores Inc., and Retail Ventures Inc.'s Filene's.

Advertising revenues at the New England properties declined again in the fourth quarter, falling 6.1 percent in the period and 9 percent for all of 2006.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Diplomat]

Poor Pinch.

[Ping-Pong Ball]

Wow, I feel guilty. I cancelled my subscription in the 4th quarter of 2006. Maybe it's my fault.

[Fargin Icehole]

This is a quagmire:
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f373/Ldeerock81/quaqmire2.gif
Giggity! Giggity!

[jrat33]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f9/Quagmire-3865.jpg/200px-Quagmire-3865.jpg

Or this....

[Clever Login Name]

Ohhh yeahhhh...

[Pro]

If you read the article, you'd see this is reflective of the situation facing many, many newspapers in this country. It's certainly not exclusive to the New York Times.

But never let the facts get into the way of a good zing, I suppose.

[Diplomat]

It is a FACT that the Times lost money in the 4th quarter.

I've received several calls in recent months from them, begging me to take the NYT and offering a free 4-week subscription. I'm guessing they do this to boost their circulation figures, as one of the newspapers in my city does.

Perhaps some changes are needed in the leadership of the NYT Company.

[Pro]

Perhaps some changes are needed in the newspaper industry as a whole. Because not that many of them are doing very well.

It has everything to do with alertnative sources of news, some free.

[Spike]

Originally posted by Clever Login Name:
New York Times Reports 4Q Loss of $648M

Jan 31 9:26 AM US/Eastern

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Times Co. posted a $648 million loss for the fourth quarter on Wednesday as it absorbed an $814.4 million charge to write down the value of its struggling New England properties, The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
The company said the non-cash charge reflected declines in current and projected results at the newspapers, which have been hit hard by the consolidations of key advertisers in the New England area as well as greater competition from online media.

The company originally paid $1.1 billion for the Globe in 1993 and $296 million for the Worcester paper in 2000.That sounds horrible, but does anyone actually understand what it means? This is not nearly as dire as it sounds.

If a working unit within a company loses value, normally that's a capital loss. That means that the decrease in value doesn't show up on the books as a loss until that unit is sold or discontinued. Until then, it continues to show as an asset at the value at which it was purchased, less depreciation. You can't depreciate intangible assets like goodwill, so you can own a worthless company and still be showing it on your books as an asset.

For example, the Times Co. bought these two other newspapers seven years ago for a total of $1,396,000,000 (that's almost 1.4 BILLION). The value of those businesses as assets has declined, but the Times Co. still had to show them on the books as assets of $1,396,000,000.

That could present a distorted picture to investors of what the company is REALLY holding, so the regulatory agencies allow companies in this kind of situation to "write down" assets that have lost value. What that means is that the asset is appraised, and the value that has been lost is converted from an asset to an expense.

In this case, the NY Times Co. decided that these two newspapers had declined in value $814,400,000. So they converted that much of the asset over to an expense. They entered an expense of $814,400,000 and reduced the value of those assets to $581,600,000. They lost more than half their value as assets. But against the total assets of the NY Times Co., it's really not that much.

Sounds terrible, right? But then look at the other number published in that article. The Times posted $648 million loss for the quarter, but after this $814,400,000 in expenses had been added to it. That means that the Times Co. would have posted a $166,400,000 profit if they hadn't voluntarily decided to take this write down this quarter. During this quarter last year, they only posted $63.1 million profit. That's more than a $100 million difference in the positive direction.

So why would they intentionally show a loss, when they could have shown a profit? Well, for one thing, they have a duty and responsibility to present an honest picture of their business to their shareholders. If the assets lose value, they should show that.

But there's a more practical reason: taxes. Let's say for argument's sake that the $166.4 million profit they would have made this quarter is representative of their profits throughout the year. (I know their profits likely vary wildly from quarter to quarter, but bear with me just for the sake of example.) That means they would normally have to pay taxes on $665,600,000 of profit through the four quarters of this year. Corporations are taxed at 40%, so that would have been a $266,240,000 tax bill.

But instead, with that crazy $814.4 million expense, they'll instead have a $148.8 million loss for the year. They'll pay NO income taxes, because they showed NO profit on the books (even though they are in essence still a profitable company), and they'll probably get to carry all or part of the loss over to next year's taxes. In other words, if they were to make a $665.6 million profit again next year (with no extraordinary expenses like this write down), they wouldn't pay taxes on all that profit but WOULD get to represent it all as profit to the investors.

When the financial statements are prepared at the end of their fiscal year, that write down will be separated out from everything else in its own section, headed "Extraordinary Expenses." It will show what the profit would have been without it. That tells the investor everything, right there. It says, "We may not look like a profitable company, but don't count us out just yet."

So, are they becoming less profitable? Absolutely. But they haven't reached the point where they're not profitable at all. Not by a long shot.

[Produce man]

If credibility was money, the NYT would have filed for chapter 11 years ago.

[ February 01, 2007, 03:13 PM: Message edited by: Produce man ]

[Ping-Pong Ball]

The thing I don't get about newspapers like the Times is why they delivered it to my home at 1:30 in the morning. This resulted in much of the content (especially sports) from not being included. Why get the paper when I can get all the information from the Internet?

Speaking of Internet, most newspaper websites are a total joke. Their sites are:

1.) Mostly made up of breaking news stories that are poorly written, full of typos, errors, or grammatical mistakes (Guess breaking the story means more then doing it well or getting it right.)
2.) Teaser stories telling me more will be in tomorrow's paper.

Other paper trouble:

1.) Telemarketers who call you 24/7 to upgrade, change, or add to your service once you initially subscribe.
2.) Poor customer service. Luckily I have a dog that I trained to do a search & recovery mission to locate where in my neighborhood the Times would drop the paper. (Except on Sundays where I think the delivery driver got off on throwing the dead-forest edition against my garage door at 100 mph resulting in a nuclear bomb deafening explosion of sound that reverberates through my house shaking it off its foundation and waking myself & all my neighbors.) If they are going to deliver it at 1:30 in the morning, couldn't they spare the few extra seconds to at least place it somewhere in my zip code?

[ February 01, 2007, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Ping-Pong Ball ]

[kim jung il]

And ...
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/korea/story/leader/kim.dae.jung/link.kim.jong.il.jpg
...they want blame Kim type people.

[Diplomat]

I tried it once a few years ago on a free two-week subscription, always taking the papers to the office, as the NYT is not allowed in my house.

There was virtually nothing in it that I couldn't get from other sources.

The only thing I will say for them is that the papers were on the doorstep every morning. Don't know what time they arrived but their deliveryman was reliable.

[NYC Street]

I know you political types are turning handstands over this, but two things should be noted:

1. The losses were not from operations, but were the result of writing down "goodwill" - the projected value of media properties, primarily the Times' newpspaer in Boston.

2. This isn't a good situation for anyone. It means that one of the few companies that actually covers news - hiring reporters and photographers and sending them out on stories - will be less inclined to do.

[Diplomat]

The company's money picture may improve once the TV stations are sold; that's underway now.

The New York Times can once again be a good paper if it would revert to the culture it had until 1992, when Little Pinch took over.

Under his leadership, there has been scandal and ethically-challenged leadership. The paper is mostly an opinion journal now, pushing Pinch's political agenda.

His immediate predecessors were honorable men and would've been less tolerant of the scandals. There are distinguished and honorable newspaper publishers in this country. Pinch is not one of them.

[Clever Login Name]

Political agenda, you say? A snipe from the competition at the NY Post ...

A BAN ON 'VICTORY'
February 4, 2007 -- Question: When is a U.S. military victory not a victory?

Answer: When it's reported by The New York Times.

Read the account from Baghdad in the Jan. 30 Times about a battle the previous weekend in the city of Najaf - one of the biggest engagements of the war - and you'd think that U.S. and Iraqi forces had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of what was described as "an obscure renegade militia."

"Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity" of the fighters arrayed against them, read the piece by correspondent Marc Santora, who added, "They needed far more help from American forces than previously disclosed."

Not until the article's sixth paragraph - 200 words into the 1,100-word piece - did this sentence appear: "The Iraqis and Americans eventually prevailed in the battle."

Or, as Wellington said after defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, "It was a damned close-run thing" - but the good guys won.

So why wasn't this the lead of the Times' story? Given the way things have been going, it would seem to be an unusual enough development to warrant prominent attention.

Maybe because the Times doesn't want America to win in Iraq.

Indeed, it seems that the Times wants to squelch any talk of possible victory - even if that talk doesn't appear in the paper.

The paper's chief military correspondent, Michael Gordon, went on PBS' "Charlie Rose Show" recently, and expressed qualified support for President Bush's troop surge - noting that "we've never really tried to win" in Iraq.

Stressing that this was "a purely personal view," Gordon declared: "I think that if it's done right, I think that there is the chance to accomplish something."

Not exactly controversial stuff there. But Gordon's editors and some of his left-wing readers deemed it offensive.

As Times Public Editor Byron Calame disclosed last Sunday, Gordon was upbraided by his editors, who declared that he'd "stepped over the line" on the show and offered "poorly worded shorthand for some analytical points."

Gordon, the column said, "agrees his comments on the show went too far."

Too far?

Interestingly, Times editors never seem to have a problem with remarks by other reporters - provided they attack the Bush administration.

Consider correspondent Chris Hedges' infamous 2003 commencement address at Rockford College, where he charged that Americans were becoming "tyrants to others weaker than ourselves," and linked Bush to Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon - whom he said were "carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless violence."

Nor, as the Web site Timeswatch.org points out, was there any reprimand of correspondent Neil McFarquhar, who last summer also appeared on Charlie Rose's show and at tacked the Bush administration for "rush ing bombs to this part of the world."

"It just erodes and erodes and erodes America's reputation," said McFarquhar - who, unlike Gordon, did not even offer the disclaimer that his was "a purely personal view."

From the Times, silence.

Was this because McFarquhar and Hedges were spreading a message that Times editors agree with?

How else to explain it?

Political hypocrisy from The New York Times is no surprise. Nor is the fact that it is prepared to squelch free speech - even by its own reporters - that doesn't jibe with the paper's far-left viewpoint.

But that its reporting from Iraq has become so slanted as to fundamentally misrepresent events on the battlefield is worse than disappointing.

It's simply unacceptable.

[2:30]

This from the newspaper that brags that it does no fact checking and insists that it's OK to alter facts and make up things to make stories more "Post like."

There's credibility.