Occupy Wall Street: Target the Times

NYT media ink-stained wretch, David Carr, eggs on the Wall Street protesters to target newspapers. Specifically Gannett.

Carr in "Why Not Occupy Newsrooms?" Almost two weeks ago, USA Today put its finger on why the Occupy Wall Street protests continued to gain traction. “The bonus system has gone beyond a means of rewarding talent and is now Wall Street’s primary business,” the newspaper editorial stated, adding: “Institutions take huge gambles because the short-term returns are a rationale for their rich payouts. But even when the consequences of their risky behavior come back to haunt them, they still pay huge bonuses.” Well thought and well put, but for one thing: If you were looking for bonus excess despite miserable operations, the best recent example I can think of is Gannett, which owns USA Today. The week before the editorial ran, Craig A. Dubow resigned as Gannett’s chief executive. His short six-year tenure was, by most accounts, a disaster. Gannett’s stock price declined to about $10 a share from a high of $75 the day after he took over; the number of employees at Gannett plummeted to 32,000 from about 52,000, resulting in a remarkable diminution in journalistic boots on the ground at the 82 newspapers the company owns. Never a standout in journalism performance, the company strip-mined its newspapers in search of earnings, leaving many communities with far less original, serious reporting. Given that legacy, it was about time Mr. Dubow was shown the door, right? Not in the current world we live in. Not only did Mr. Dubow retire under his own power because of health reasons, he got a mash note from Marjorie Magner, a member of Gannett’s board, who said without irony that “Craig championed our consumers and their ever-changing needs for news and information.” But the board gave him far more than undeserved plaudits. Mr. Dubow walked out the door with just under $37.1 million in retirement, health and disability benefits. That comes on top of a combined $16 million in salary and bonuses in the last two years.

Carr: "And in case you thought they were paying up just to get rid of a certain way of doing business — slicing and dicing their way to quarterly profits — Mr. Dubow was replaced by Gracia C. Martore, the company’s president and chief operating officer. She was Mr. Dubow’s steady accomplice in working the cost side of the business, without finding much in the way of new revenue. She has already pocketed millions in bonuses and will now be in line for even more."

Carr fingers real estate billionaire Sam Zell and his bankrupt Tribune Co. for making obscene bonuses part of the bankruptcy deal. Then:

2009.  The same year Mexico's Lebanese telecommunications billionaire, Carlos Slim, bailed out the bleeding, under-the-financial-gun NYT with $250 mil. The Times is paying back the loan three years early at 14% interest.  Bloomberg. $26 mil annual interest. CNN Money. The same year NYT laid off 100 newsroom employees:  "The program mirrors one carried out in the spring of 2008, when the paper erased 100 positions in its newsroom."  NYT

At the time Time mag mused: "Having Slim come to the rescue may be a bit of an embarrassment to The Times." 

More than a month after the $250 injection, the NYT profiled Slim "The Reticent Media Baron" which noted: "He already owns 6.9 percent of the company and has lost tens of millions on that investment. Under the new financial arrangement, that stake could grow to 17 percent, though he will receive no representation on the company’s board and no shares with special voting rights."

In August 2011 Slim snapped up a million shares cheap, and less than two months later increased his stake to 8.1 percent. WSJ  NYT reported the August news, ending with this:  "The company borrowed the money from Mr. Slim in early 2009 amid a particularly rough period in its history."

So what's in it for Slim? Must-read New Yorker.

Carr winds up Monday's piece with: "The optics of the bonuses are far worse than the practical impact. Newspapers are asking their employees for shared sacrifice and their digital readers to begin paying. So, lucrative packages won’t cut it. As newspapers all over the country struggle to divine the meaning of the Occupy protests, some of the companies that own them might want to listen closely to see if there is a message there meant for them."

For the New York Times, Carr's observations are ex post facto. 

For OWS:  Picket Slim's $44 mil Fifth Avenue townhouse! 

Related:  "A new advertising campaign from the Newspaper Association of America seeks to change those views and focus on how reading newspapers — in their digital or print incarnations — actually makes users sexy." NYT