Is it the End of “The New York Times”?

When will the moment come that will announce the end of printing presses, when everything goes directly digital and online? Rumors that were warning us of this moment have been spread since the 1980´s. There have been several hundreds of newspapers closing down in the past few years and the remaining ones are laying off their journalist and other employees. How can you maintain journalism when major newspapers are laying off their journalist (McChesney, & Nichols, 2010)? One of the major examples that points out the significance of this issue is the current debate about the end of The New York Times. The “Times” have been established in 1851 and is the largest local and metropolitan newspaper in the United States. It is the newspaper that has won the most Pulitzer prices out of all news companies. Nevertheless, in 2009 its weekly edition´s circulation has dropped under a million for the first time since the 1980´s (Perez-Pena, 2009). Is the end of the print version of The New York Times coming closer?
Michael Hirschhorn, writing for the online version of the Atlantic, warns that the End of The New York Times will come rather sooner than later. He refers to a earnings report released by the Times itself, and this report indicates no good. It says that drastic measures have to be taken for the Time in order not to run bankruptcy with over $400 Million in debt. By now the Times is about $1 Billion in debt on the books publishing and in last year’s October its Cash reserves were down to $46 Million. With those numbers the future of the Times certainly does not look good. “As part of our analysis of our uses of cash, we are evaluating future financing arrangements, “was the reaction of the Times to this horrifying news. What put the Times in this crisis is not only the worst economic climate since 80 years, but mostly the massive drops in circulation. The economic climate is only responsible for the low demand for advertising. Advertisement is the first thing a company can save money at, which is bad for the Newspapers industry, because advertisement revenues are together with subscriptions the greatest source of revenue. To get out of this misery some actions have already been taken. The owners of the Newspaper, the Sulzberger family, have agreed to cut their dividend to a great extent. Furthermore the company is taking into account to sell The Boston Globe or to sell its share in the Boston Red Sox. Media giants such as Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, or Carlos Slim are tempted to purchase The New York Times, and place it as a trophy into its portfolio (Hirschhorn, 2009). One thing is for certain. At some point, rather sooner than later, the print edition of the “Times” will no longer exist and with the print version of the “Times” going down, we will lose thousands of smart journalists.


Hirschhorn, M. (2009, February). End times . Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/01/end-times/7220/

McChesney, R.W., & Nichols, J. (2010). The Death and life of american journalism: the media revolution that will begin the world again. Nation Books.

Perez -Pena, R., (2009, October 26). U.s. newspaper circulation falls 10% . Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/media/27audit.html?_r=2