The NYT’s disturbing pattern of obscuring information important to shareholders
We have noticed on several occasions a disturbing pattern in SEC disclosures of the New York Times Company. When year-over-year comparisons are unfavorable, the Times often just skips making the comparisons. We have noted this on many occasions in the case of home market circulation of the Times, which declines year after year after year — almost 30% in little more than a decade. But the relevant comparative information is always missing from the SEC 10K annual report. The shareholder has to ferret out the information for himself from multiple documents.
We saw the same disturbing pattern today in the story below. Information necessary to understanding the Boston Globe’s performance was omitted from the 2005 10K. A shareholder had to dig through the 2004 document to find the relevant information.
The SEC requires a “discussion of risk factors in plain English” in the 10K’s of reporting companies, as Thomas Lifson noted in our recent piece in The American Thinker. Omitting the comparative circulation figures, as well as the advertising rate numbers, from relevant 10K’s is counterproductive to a “discussion of risk factors in plain English.”