By: Joe Strupp It's difficult enough to write about your own company, especially when it is The New York Times. But to cover its ongoing financial troubles and provide a balanced approach is an even tougher task.
Just ask Richard Perez-Pena. Already in a challenging spot covering the newspaper industry for the Times, Perez-Pena wrote a lengthy 1,500-word story for Monday's paper that appears to do the job of laying out the company?s problems, but offering both optimistic hope for its future and clear criticisms of where it went wrong.
Perez-Pena said taking on his employer was just a simple result of the news. "It was driven by events," he said Monday. "After the stories about borrowing against the building, seeking to sell the Red Sox stake, events demanded we write a story."
He admits the obvious conflict makes it more challenging, but offered no signs of any attempts at influence. "The hardest thing about writing about yourself is knowing that a lot of people are not going to believe everything you say," he said. "People inside the building will think you are too tough and people outside will think you are too soft."
The story relates, "Unlike much of the industry, the Times Company, which publishes The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune, does not carry the kind of crushing debt burden that has led other publishers to default or file for bankruptcy, and it has fared better than most of its peers at holding on to revenue from ads and circulation."
Later, it adds, however, "But the company reported last month that its newspaper ad revenue fell 14.2 percent in 2008, for a drop of 19.5 percent in the last two years; industrywide, the declines were about 16 percent and 23 percent."
He then writes: "The drop-off in ad revenue both online and in print has put a squeeze on the company?s cash flow. As a result, the Times Company has been looking to raise money by trying to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox and arranging a sale-leaseback of its new headquarters building.
"It slashed its stock dividend by almost three-quarters, and last month, it agreed to borrow $250 million on punishing terms, including an interest rate above 14 percent, from Carlos Slim Hel?, a billionaire from Mexico."
The entire article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/business/media/
09times.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all
Perez-Pena says he approaches the story the same as any other, but adds, "I do it with the proviso I know more about this company. I don?t start cold when I write about this company." However, he reveals in the story that some top executives "declined" to be interviewed.
He also contends that there is a tendency to report more about your own paper, in an attempt not to look secretive. "We would have written a story about this given the same set of events about another company, but not necessarily about a company this size," he says. "We are not a large company. It is definitely to look as though we are not hiding anything. There is a little bit of bend over backwards."
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