Imagine how angry you would be as a shareholder of a company which sat back and watched its home market share slip to third place from its perennial first place tradition. What if it had lost 30% off its share price in the last year, while the overall market went up 10%. You are 40% poorer than you would have been with an average mutual fund.

In most corporations, you might, as CEO, be worried about the ordinary shareholders voting for a dissident slate of directors. But not The at the New York Times Company.

Jack Risko, an insightful and knowledgeable blogger at Dinocrat.com on the subject of business, takes a good look at the New York Times Company. He shows that the big story of their decline to third place among New York newspapers is virtually ignored by the other media.

Jack has a long track record of examining the newspaper and media industries through the lens of business history and strategy, a discipline we both studied from the same people at Harvard Business School. So Jack "ran a few numbers" from the reported data and looked for their performance in submarkets of analytical importance.

Jack also takes on their corporate governance, and explains how they are able to continue to screw—up the family business which is also a major public company, and not have to worry about the interests of most of its shareholders.

Read the whole thing.

Thomas Lifson   7 17 05