The New York Times Company Soon to be Known as the Two Edged Sword

The New York Times Company's fiscal year just ended. In a few short days we should see their financial reports for 2005. Until then, 2004 will have to do.

The New York Times is a diversified company with many media holdings, plus other holdings such as forest products. The NYT Co. had net earnings of $292.6 million on net sales of $3.3 billion. My calculator tells me that is a cool 8.9% net profit margin give or take a few tenths of a percent.

I know that the regular readers of State Street are hip, intelligent, and informed. I point out the numbers because occasionally someone from Sleepy Hollow, USA stops by and gets all confused about big time corporate America.

Lots of folks on the Left and the Right think the New York Times newspaper is a rag. Whatever. Far be it for me to argue the case for a multi-billion dollar corporation one way or the other. If they don't have the wherewithal to do that for themselves, then I would pronounce them all messed up.

The Bush Administration, having one piece of coal left over from 2005, decided to put it into the NYT Company's stocking for Christmas. They have started an investigation into the leaks that resulted in the recent NYT's domestic surveillance stories.

The New York Times Company has had over a year to get their legal act together for this eventuality. I'd almost bet they have a reserve set aside for legal fees.

The thing about it is that The New York Times Company is a publicly traded company with a shitload of stockholders and folks who own their debt instruments. They ain't John Doe who you can just whisk off to Cuba for the duration.

That creates problems such as trials and public information and other inconvenient time wasting activities.

Leak investigations are two edged swords. This could be way better than the Michael Jackson trial.

My early line is NYT as 1-2 favorites. I know what you are asking. Why am I giving Attorney General Gonzalez and President Bush that much credit?