What do Erskine Bowles and Laura D’Andrea Tyson have in common? (a) they are well-known and respected Democrats who served in senior positions in the Clinton administration; (b) they are high-profile educators who have substantial experience in business; or (c) they are two of the nine board members of Morgan Stanley, which this week told Pinch Sulzberger to take a hike. Answer: all of the above.

It is not that they had any part in the decision by Morgan Stanley to organize 28% of Times’ Class A shares in revolt against the Sulzberger admininstration (see WaPo), but surely they will be asked about it. Just as surely the revolt cannot be portrayed as the action of the greedy barons of Wall Street, given the impeccable pedigrees of these overseers.

Indeed, that spin doesn’t even appear to be in play. The revolt against Pinch seems pretty widespread. At least matters seem that way to us, given the rather nasty story on the Times in its own pages. The story by Katherine Seelye includes the devastating chart below, highlighting the losses suffered by shareholders, notably including the employee participants in the NYT’s stock incentive plan, who appear to have lost a lot of money on Times’ stock while the stock market has been booming.

That 47% loss is bad enough, but there is more. The story seems to us to seethe with understated anger at the imperiousness of the Pinch regime. For example, the story gave this sentence its own paragraph: “The Times Company declined to comment on the vote.” Delicious! Arianna Huffington noted that detail as well, and added the rumor that the same fellow who helped put Knight Ridder in play, Bruce Sherman, is also part of the anti-Pinch cabal. It seems that there is a rather large group looking for Pinch’s scalp.

Our friend Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker has been on Pinch’s case for two years now, and we think his wish may well be granted soon. One of the concerns that he has repeatedly aired is that the family-contolled Class B shares unfairly protected Sulzberger from the workings of corporate democracy, a concern we also have voiced. However, that concern may be overstated. Indeed, we think that the downfall of Pinch may be one for the business history books if it occurs, the rare case of losing control of a company despite holding the control shares.

In business they say it is better to be lucky than to be smart. The New York Times Company is delivering an object lesson in the perils of being neither.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 21st, 2006 at 8:20 am and is filed under business, General, MSM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.