Will Murdoch Scandal Bring Change at The New York Times and Washington Post?
One of the interesting aspects of the current News Corp affair is the striking corporate boardroom similarity the parent company of The Wall Street Journal bears with the owners of the other serious national broadsheet, The New York Times.
Both companies are Wall Street dinosaurs in at least one sense; each relies on a dual-class share structure. Dual-class stock, as the name suggests, creates a class society amongst shareholders. In most public companies there is at least some semblance of investment democracy: one share equals one vote. But in a dual-class stock, one type of share may be the equivalent of one vote, another could represent ten.Hence, Rupert Murdoch can own 12 percent of News Corp but have 40 percent of its voting rights. Other companies with dual-class stock are Washington Post and Ford, as well as tech darlings LinkedIn and Google.
News Corp, The New York Times and The Washington Post have each represented a horrible investment for shareholders in recent years, and not all to do with reasons associated with the decline of print journalism. All are controlled by families – the Murdochs, Sulzbergers and Grahams – with a disproportionate amount of influence compared to actual shares owned.
One consequence of the News Corp fiasco will almost certainly be a shakeup of the company’s share structure and its somnambulant board (comprised of mostly Murdoch family and a coterie of Murdoch pals). Both factors contributed to a string of questionable decisions within a company in which one man essentially dictates what will be done.
Most likely, shareholders in The New York Times and Washington Post would not put up too much of a fuss if a little control were wrested from the grips of the head honchos of those companies as well.
Does The New York Times Hope People Will Be Driven Offline?
Whoops, in the past five minutes I have surfed my way across five articles on The New York Times’ website – which means another 15 minutes at this rate and I will have exhausted my monthly quota as a non-subscriber to their new digital plan.
Reverse New York Times Trend Investing Works Again
Mr. Chortler, it must be said, did not achieve his renown through his investing acumen. In fact, the heir to the Chortler publishing empire has presided over the downward slide from a once great media icon to the sorry Internet publication you see today.
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