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From the American Thinker:

Yesterday, New York Times Company Chief Executive Janet Robinson told investors at a Newspaper Association of America conference in New York that the company would be raising the price of single copy newspapers and home delivery subscriptions. At the same time, the company has suddenly accelerated and apparently made more drastic a previously-announced plan to shrink the physical size of the paper and cut the amount of news provided to readers....

In the jargon of strategic consulting, this sort of price increase, asset liquidation and quality cut is known as "milking a cash cow" and indicates that a company is "harvesting" a business - realizing that it has no growth prospects, and that its role is to provide cash to invest in other more promising ventures. How long the business will limp along is anyone's guess. People still buy The Farmer's Almanac today...

Having last year sold off the highly profitable television broadcast properties that were a legacy of the previous generation of company management and the last of the crown jewels, there is no more cushion of ready profits to mitigate the failure of the print business to arrest its death spiral. The earnings reported last week demonstrated that financially, the company is composed of a large newspaper business decaying faster and faster, slightly offset by a medium-sized, nicely-but-not-spectacularly-growing internet publishing business, and a half interest in a Manhattan skyscraper under construction.

Under the circumstances, the haughty imperial tone of authoratativeness taken by the paper in its news stories and its editorials is all the more remarkable. Thanks to "public editor" Irwin Chusid for the link.

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