The Gray Lady turns pasty white: Is the financial demise of The Times at hand?

In 1896, Adolph Ochs bought The New York Times and boldly placed on its front-page flag the slogan All The News That’s Fit To Print. Today, its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., may need to rewrite that slogan to Less News And Less Money To Print It.

That’s because The Times has fallen on hard times (forgive me). The faltering business model that has strapped financial straitjackets onto other newspapers (witness the Christian Science Monitor ending its print edition) may have finally knee-capped the nation’s best newspaper. It has significant debt coming due, and insignificant cash on hand.

Advertisement

Power, politics, and The Real Meaning of today’s election

What is the meaning — or at least a meaning — of today’s election?

I asked the juniors and seniors in my opinion-writing course to consider that today by looking into:

• How many state legislatures have both chambers controlled by one party? Will that number increase for either party?
• Will governorships contested today change from one party to another?
• What is the party split in the House of Representatives today, and what might it be tomorrow?
• What is the makeup of the Senate today, and what might it be tomorrow?

It required only about half an hour of basic Web research to answer those questions. In other words, they found that the significance of today’s election might be this: How big are Sen. Barack Obama’s coattails, and what might that mean?