Morgan Stanley has bailed on The New York Times:
Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years.
The person declined to be identified because Morgan Stanley hasn’t made the sale public yet. Traders with knowledge of the transaction said Merrill Lynch & Co. brokered a $183 million block trade of 10 million New York Times shares this morning.
McClatchy, owner of The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, is also mentioned in the story:
Other newspaper stocks, including Gannett Co., owner of USA Today, and McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, are also trading at 10-year lows because of the loss of advertising to new media such as the Internet and the decline in classified ads linked to tumbling housing sales.
Loss of advertising to the Internet and loss of classified lineage to sites like craigslist.com are blamed. It certainly couldn’t be content, could it? I wonder, would McClatchy have run a story in the fall of 1945 with this headline: “Cessation of hostilities in Germany and Japan puts black marketeers in a bind”?
