An investor at Thursday’s 2009 New York Times annual meeting came up with a heck of a way to save money. But first, a recap of all the serious stuff that executives brought up at the meeting (Read the whole thing on the wire):

• We will stay public.
• We will not be sold.
• There is no one solution to what ails the newspaper business.
• We’re trying everything.
• Stop asking about us closing The Boston Globe or selling it. We won’t tell you until we’re ready. (By the way, it only took the Times nearly a month to reveal what the Globe has reported for ages: It is on track to lose $85 million this year.)

Now for money-saving tips for the struggling TImes, courtesy of an investor whose name I didn’t get a chance to catch. Here’s what she said to Times Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr during an investor Q&A:

As to savings on newsprint, I see belabored articles taking almost full pages on obscure topics… perhaps [about] someone in the Brazilian forest I cannot do anything about. So if you’re trying to save newsprint, perhaps you could edit these things to a more reasonable size… [Then] there is the expense you incur editorially in aspects that are really not necessary. [Times food critic] Frank Bruni had to go to Texas to write about a pork restaurant which most of your readers will never go to… Cathy Horyn had to go to the Dominican Republic to interview Oscar de la Renta who is here 90 percent of the time.

Tough call for a reporter like me. Who doesn’t love traveling to interesting places and writing about them, preferably at 5,000 words a pop? Then again, if it’s all about readers first…

Meanwhile, another investor complained that the Times does not offer enough local coverage, but seems to have the budget to send reporters all around the world. “Send these people to Brooklyn! Send these people to the Bronx!” he said of Times reporters. “You will increase circulation.”

Sulzberger paused for a moment, then reminded the investor that the Times won a Pulitzer this week for local reporting. As to whether shareholders can reap the dividends of Pulitzers, that’s another story…

(Cartoon: Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., courtesy of Paul Szep)

The first question one of my editors asked me on Friday night when hearing that The New York Times Co threatened to shut down The Boston Globe was whether it was a negotiating tactic. That’s an easy one, for sure. Unions causing you problems at your business? Need to cut costs? Threaten to kill the whole business. It helps your adversaries reorganize their priorities right quick (Though sometimes they really mean it. Look at Hearst in Seattle).

Here’s a hypothetical recipe for how you could do it if you were running The New York Times:

• You spent $1.1 billion on a paper that, thanks to the sunset on the newspaper business, is worth far less now. In fact, it’s dragging down the whole company, and you would rather let it rot than eat away at the fortunes of your flagship paper. The last time someone hinted that they would be willing to pay — about half  of what you did — you said “no.”
• Oops. Now no one will buy it, even though you’re also selling free tickets to see the Red Sox in the form of your stake in the company that owns the team.
• Tell the union reps that you need $20 million in cost cuts, that your loss on the paper will be $85 million this year and that you need it done pronto. If not, no more paper. To make it really crazy, do this on a day when the paper’s editor is across the country in Oregon, delivering a lecture to journalism students that deals with the sorry state of affairs that the journalism world is in.
• Wait for someone in the union to leak the threat to the nearby alternative paper that follows the Globe’s goings-on like white on rice (The Boston Phoenix in this case), then let the Globe’s editors run their own story. (PS: I won’t link to the Phoenix because it’s throwing a pop-up ad at me whenever I visit the page that invites me to download anti-virus software. I won’t inflict that pain on readers.)
• When other reporters call, decline comment.
• Watch the story go around the world. Watch a buyer emerge, someone who fulminates long and hard about civic responsibility and not letting a hallowed journalistic institution go to ground. Sell it to that buyer at a massive loss, which one of the in-house tax geniuses can find a way to write off in a way that’s advantageous to the company.

I’m not saying that the Times wouldn’t let the Globe die or that it wouldn’t be a big loss to Boston. Still, The New York Times Co wants to protect one thing: The New York Times. That’s what the Ochs-Sulzberger family’s trust is all about. The shares in that family’s trust control the company but it’s really about the paper, and it’s not certain that a huge offer to buy the company out could persuade the family to get rid of it (despite prior evidence). Heck, the Times even lists the trust as one of its risk factors in its securities filings.

As for the Globe? It really is a steal now.

Keep an eye on:

• Variety’s longtime editor Peter Bart will no longer oversee day-to-day activities for the Hollywood trade paper (LA Times)

• Pixar Animation’s “Up” is drawing scrutiny from both Wall Street and toy retailers (NY Times)

• Glam Media has raised $10 million in a fifth round of financing (paidContent)

(Photo: Reuters)

We sprinkled updates into this blog. We’re highlighting them like this.

Thanks to TechCrunch, U.S. tech reporters are about to spend another weekend working instead of playing. UPDATE: Or maybe Kara Swisher at All Things D will save them!

Two sources told proprietor Michael Arrington that Google “is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter.” He wrote:

We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.

Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.

Later, he updated his entry to say that another source told him talks are at an early stage and could amount to a deal to build a Google real-time search engine. Who knows how this one will shake out. Web operations like Twitter can’t get popular without people starting to fit puzzle pieces together to see which company ought to buy them. That might be why The San Francisco Business Times picked up Wired and Industry Standard founder John Battelle’s blog entry that Twitter would go to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $750 million. Turns out it was an April Fool’s joke.

Then Swisher at All Things D said this:

While the “news” that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which TechCrunch reported last night, certainly sounds exciting, it isn’t accurate in any way, according to a number of sources BoomTown spoke to close to the situation.

She also covered herself with a “to-be-sure graf,” as hacks like me call them:

Google or anyone else could plunk down more than $1 billion in cash and I cannot imagine Twitter’s investors would or could resist. Nor should they. And, what if, for example, Microsoft (MSFT) offered some huge cash payday for Twitter? In that case, I am certain Google would jump into the face-off, backing up a giant Brinks trunk to the door of Twitter’s San Francisco offices.

Afterward, everyone scratched their heads and ruminated mightily about this very important situation. TechCrunch, meanwhile, stands by its story, a blogger there told us.

Will Google announce plans to buy Twitter in 2009?

Keep an eye on:

• MediaNews Group, the Denver-based newspaper publisher run by legendary hyper-acquirer “Lean Dean” Singleton, worked out a deal with creditors on paying off its heavy debt that Singleton put on the company as he bought and bought and bought newspapers (before slashing and slashing their budgets and staff). And he said bankruptcy wasn’t an issue. (The New York Times)
• Some people who work with him have told me that New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller comes off as arrogant, but he’s actually shy. This is the same shy man who at Stanford University on Thursday said CNN’s reporting has been replaced by juries of commentators who work on a set that looks like a parody of a Daily Show parody of a news set. He also said saving The New York Times ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause. From my own interactions with Keller, I would conclude that he’s a deadpan comic, not shy. (Politico)
• TMZ.com is devoting more money to reporting gossip from Washington, D.C. Why flack this now? Is it because parent company Time Warner is geeking out at the cable show in DC this week? Maybe TMZ’s Harvey Levin bunked up with Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes to save money in the downturn. OK, maybe not. (Reuters)
• In case you didn’t know already, you should not get news for free online. Rupert said so. (Please ignore this free blog entry on this free website). It shouldn’t work for online TV either, said Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav. (PaidContent)

(Photo: Reuters)

Why do we care about Facebook?

1. People you know and respect use it. That includes you.
2. People you know and respect who scoff at it still know what Facebook is.
3. Facebook, like Google, is popular enough to have become a verb as well as a noun.
4. If the public ever got a crack at buying shares in it, lots of people would get rich.

That’s why mass clucking ensued among the technology press when the word came out Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu is splitting. The Wall Street Journal, so far as we can tell, broke the news. It said:

The departure of the 37-year-old Mr. Yu and the ensuing search for a replacement are likely to renew speculation that Facebook is stepping up plans for a public offering, despite the rocky economy. The company, which has turned down several acquisition offers in the past, has said it is hoping to go public in the next few years.

But some employees and investors, who have poured roughly $455 million into the company, according to VC Experts.com Inc., are eager for Facebook to start planning an offering and have raised questions about whether it has enough money to sustain its growth. Many others have said the company is over-valued, which — in addition to the economic downturn — hampered its efforts to fund an employee-buyback program last year.

One person familiar with the matter said Facebook’s financials are strong and the company expects revenue in 2009 to increase at least 70% from last year. (The New York Times has details on that too.)

The Journal also referred to the now famous $240 million that Microsoft invested in Facebook, giving the service a perceived value of $15 billion (see No. 4 in our list above). The problem is, the WSJ reported, Yu’s job “has grown more difficult, as Facebook has struggled to raise additional money at lower valuations.” If Facebook revenue is supposed to grow 70 percent — a giant leap — history would suggest, and nearly insist, that last year’s revenue total would have been only enough to buy a pack of Smarties.

That would make Yu’s job more difficult indeed. It must be hard to tell all your potential investors that Microsoft was going overboard on that whole $15 billion valuation thing.

Still: Don’t assume that it’s all about Yu. Kara Swisher at her Boomtown blog (like the Journal, also owned by Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp) hints at strained family relations:

In a back-to-the-future move, former Netscape CFO Peter Currie will be the key adviser to Facebook about financial matters, until a new search for a CFO is found, sources said. … But others sources at the company said Yu and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg had had intensifying differences in recent weeks, over a range of issues.

One last note: The NYT story quoted Facebook spokesman (and non-family relation) Larry Yu as saying the site has no immediate plans to go public. Swisher at Boomtown said that Facebook was prepping for an eventual IPO. It sounds like the old, cold comfort behind the idea that if you wait long enough for something to happen, it will.

Keep an eye on:

• An Economist magazine theme park in London? That’s how you know it’s April Fool’s Day. What we want to know is who wrote up the brilliant description that went out in the press release Tuesday night? Oh yeah, they don’t use bylines. Also, check the theme park map. (The Economist)
• The New York Times might have a ton of problems, but its prominence in the media world and its air of rarified intellectualism make beating up on the family that runs the paper irresistible for many people. Mark Bowden at Vanity Fair earlier this week went to town on Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr in a way that would leave most people gasping for breath from the sucker punch. There is limited defense of Sulzberger online this week, but at least there’s Jack Shafer at Slate. He doesn’t quite exculpate the Sulzbergers (I wouldn’t want people saying some of these things about me), but he puts the insults in perspective. (Slate)
• So what if the real estate market is in the tank? Zillow.com, which anxious homeowners use to check to see how much equity they have lost in their homes, is letting people do that by putting its technology on newspaper websites. Is this what they mean by misery loving company? (Editor & Publisher)

(Photo: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg; Reuters)

The big story in the media for the rest of the week is the annual National Cable Telecommunications Association Show, or “the cable show,” as its commonly called.

This year’s primary topic looks like it will be how the big, traditional operators in the business will adapt to an age when the Internet is giving people more options to watch shows, and not always in a way that feeds the bank.

Here is our own take on the show from the Reuters wire:

Both sets of companies will be brainstorming on how to cope with or benefit from disintermediation: consumers can now watch decent-quality video online whenever they want, and often for free.

“Last year, cable companies were in a more probelgradetectionist mode but now they’re facing up to the inevitable trend, because online video is really here to stay,” said Tuna Amobi, equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s.

Executives will also have the economy on their minds.

“The current recession has cut into consumer spending for household TV and telecommunications, while also causing most marketers to reduce their advertising budgets,” said Collins Stewart analyst Thomas Eagan.

Longer term, the industry hopes to forge new tie-ups to capitalize on the online trend.

Broadcasting & Cable approaches the same topic, but with the requisite “it’s still early days” comment:

But with online viewing still amounting to a tiny fraction of actual viewing (not to mention revenue), the debate over a viable business model may be a lot louder than it needs to be. Cable networks, however, have to work with their pipelines to protect everyone’s interests.

“We’re constantly looking at evolving our economic models on our shows to ensure that we’re protected well into the future,” says Andrea Wong, president and CEO of Lifetime Networks. “I don’t think anyone has the magic answer yet. I think that we’re all trying to experiment and find new ways to do business together. I think we have to.”

Those last two sentences could have been taken from a newspaper executive.

MarketWatch reports on operators freaked out about the economic recession causing people to simply give up cable and do something else with their time.

Since last May’s Cable Show in New Orleans, the price of cable stocks have dropped by an average of 31%, with most of the declines coming after the September collapse of Lehman Brothers that triggered a worldwide financial meltdown.

The phenomenon of “cord-cutting” has been a concern of some cable executives, most notably Time Warner Cable (TWC) Chairman Glenn Britt, who has voiced his belief that the wide availability of free, ad-supported television shows online through sites like Hulu, Veoh and others has made it feasible to stop paying for cable or satellite service.

Keep an eye on:

• Speaking of cable and the Internet, Google’s YouTube signed a deal with Disney to offer ABC and ESPN clips on its Web video service. Disney might also put full-length shows on the Hulu joint venture betwen News Corp and NBC Universal. This is something that the cable guys mentioned above are watching with some alarm because, as we noted above, this stuff would be free, and no one wants to wind up like newspapers who gave away the store online for the past decade. (PaidContent and The Wall Street Journal)
• Speaking of newspapers, the Journal and The New York Times had the same bright idea: Profiles of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News on their first day of delivering the news without a print newspaper. It was either genius, dumb luck or just plain dumb, depending on how you lookat it; big events in the collapsing auto industry, not to mention some other noteworthy stuff, made for a huge news day. That either spurred online interest or made readers scream because they had no paper to read about it. (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times)
• More from newspaper land: The New York Times cut its staff and sought pay concessions on Thursday. Now the axe is swinging at the Times-owned Boston Globe. Thirty buyouts, 20 layoffs. (Boston Business Journal)
  Also, online ad growth “screeches to a halt.” Sigh. (Silicon Alley Insider)
• Google commits $100 million to its venture capital fund, according to unnamed sources, like it’s some kind of scandal. Google also names folks who will run it, fortunately showing its confidence in them by saying so on the record. (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times)
• Google Maps is good at catching cheating husbands for free, if you can believe this report. (The Sun)

(Photo: Reuters)

It’s no secret that the International Herald Tribune is part of The New York Times Co, so why not flaunt it? Visitors to nytimes.com and iht.com saw evidence of this thinking Sunday (or Monday, depending on where you are).

When you visit the IHT website, you now see a Web link on your Internet browser that says this: http://global.nytimes.com/?iht. The flag at the top of the page now reads: “International Herald Tribune: The Global edition of The New York Times.” The layout of the website also has been adjusted to resemble that of nytimes.com’s homepage. If you visit nytimes.com, a banner across the top of the page invites you to “try the new global edition,” which, of course, is what iht.com used to be. If you’re a regular Reuters reader, you can’t say you’re too surprised, as we told you last June that this was coming.

We’re curious about whether bringing the IHT closer into the fold allows the Times to cut its costs in any significant way, and will update this blog entry once we get some clarity on that. The Times is dealing with falling advertising revenue and also has had to take other steps such as selling its interest in its headquarters building and borrowing money at a high interest rate from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to help pay off debt. It also cut 100 jobs in its business operations, it said on Friday, and said it is cutting staff pay by 5 percent (and in the case of union workers in its newsroom, is asking them to agree to that pay cut to avoid news staff layoffs).

Here, meanwhile, is a quote from Global Edition Editor Martin Gottlieb that was included in the press release. Somewhere in here is a “cost saving”:

Working together with The New York Times, we have been able to look at the overall balance and direction of our coverage afresh. By consolidating Web operations and improving design processes, we are freeing up editorial energies to focus on delivering the accurate reporting, thought-provoking writing and sharp analysis that our international readers need now more than ever.

There also is an advertising case to be made here, which comes courtesy of a quote from Jean Christophe Demarta, international advertising director for The New York Times Media Group:

The new online Global Edition and the new-look newspaper have generated a wealth of new opportunities for advertisers looking to reach our influential, international audience.

We like the way that NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller said it in his memo last year. He said the move would cut advertising competition between the IHT and New York Times websites and boost total international readership.

Finally, as Demarta mentioned, there are changes to the print edition. We haven’t gotten our copy yet this morning, but will update to reflect any interesting changes we find. One that the IHT mentioned in its press release is that the business section (which features Reuters copy, we should note), will be anchored on the back page Monday through Friday.

Keep an eye on:

• Which online video site is the fairest of them all? It looks like Disney feels like Google’s YouTube might be a better option for ABC than the News Corp-NBC-Providence Equity Partners-owned Hulu. PaidContent was all over the back-and-forth this weekend. (PaidContent)
• Former AOL-er Jonathan Miller is about to find a new home as digital poobah at News Corp. The story leaked out all over the place over the weekend. (Reuters)
• The Washington Post is getting ready to see how readers like its new version of the paper, ie, the one that comes without its own business section. There will be live online chats with top editors. Why not pitch in? (The Washington Post)

(Photo: Reuters)

The latest by-product of the financial crisis? Media lawsuits. More specifically: Government agencies deny or fail to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by media organizations, which then sue to force the government to own up.

The two latest cases are from News Corp’s Fox Business Network and The New York Times (both outlets’ complaints are pasted below). Fox sued for what it said was the government’s failure to respond to a FOIA request, filed on February 26, 2009, which sought records relating to information that the Securities and Exchange Commission received regarding the potential violations of the securities laws or any other potential wrongdoing by R. Allen Stanford, or Stanford Financial Group and its affiliates. This request included, but was not limited to, the SEC’s response to complaints, tips or information and any resulting audits, inquiries and investigations.

The Times’s complaint, filed by investigative reporter and Washington Post alum Jo Becker and her editor, chides the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. for stalling or failing to disclose documents related to the financial crisis, including communications between some of the top dogs in the bailout program over the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP.

Here are the complaints, both of which were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York:

09 Cv 2642 JST Complaint

SDNY 09cv02645

Guess where the paparazzi are training their lenses these days? For those of you who missed it, The New York Times writes that gossip rags have all but abandoned Britney Spears for the thrill of capturing corporate excesses on camera. From the paper:

The tabloid media, of course, have always peered into the excesses of the rich and famous with a mix of puritan disapproval and voyeurism. But these outlets and other news organizations are now recording troubling uses of taxpayer money at country clubs, private airports and glamorous retreats and, in so doing, explicitly tapping into a fierce populist anger at corporate America, and even pressuring Congress to hold companies accountable.

Populist indignation apart, perhaps people also feel a sense of glee when watching or reading about the severe scaling back of corporate budgets that once supported lavish lifestyles. Gawker may have captured the glee best in this biting account of The Wall Street Journal story on Goldman Sachs executives being asked to stay at Embassy Suites rather than the Ritz.

Reporters are often sent to capture nuggets of corporate excess, the more outrageous the better. An affinity for $40 crab legs? Flying to DC in private jets to ask for bailout money? Poolside sales conferences with six-figure tabs? The media loves writing about this stuff almost as much as people enjoy reading it. So if you’ve got any tips, let us know.

Keep an eye on:

• New AOL CEO Tim Armstrong sees a lot of options for AOL’s future. (All Things Digital)
• Alibaba seeks partnerships with U.S. companies. (Reuters)
• Carl Icahn says he doesn’t intend to push for a sale of Lions Gate. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

The Boston Globe, the revenue-challenged sibling of The New York Times, is laying off employees as it copes with a decline in advertising revenue made only worse by the recession. The thing is, it’s laying off advertising staff.

From the Globe:

The Boston Globe said yesterday it reduced by half the sales force that takes classified advertising over the telephone. Thirty classified employees, including two managers and 13 part-time employees, lost jobs. In addition, the positions of two other advertising managers were eliminated, said Robert Powers, the Globe’s spokesman.

The reason? There are fewer classified ads coming in because everyone does it for free at Craigslist and other free classified sites. Some papers have lost more than half of their classies.

Does it seem like newspapers are abandoning the classifieds battle instead of trying to win it? You tell us.

Rumors of Rupert Murdoch’s interest in buying The New York Times have been swirling for ages, and maybe the media mogul would have snapped up the venerable paper by now were it not for the Sulzbergers.

But there’s always a consolation prize, and this one’s from the West Coast. Variety writes that Murdoch could be interested in buying The Los Angeles Times and has been talking “fervently” about making a play for the paper.

And that would surely be an easier purchase to pull off, given that LA Times’ owner Tribune is in the middle of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Maybe Sam Zell, who owns Tribune, would be more willing to sell the paper to a fellow mogul than the Sulzbergers.

Keep an eye on:

• Washington Post Co’s profit sinks but revenue rises on strength of its education and cable units. (Reuters)
• Hearst Corp may sell or close down San Francisco Chronicle. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• MySpace founders may leave the social networking company. (Financial Times)