yeah yeah, “we need good papers”, but that ship has sailed. print is **dead**. like buggy whips: their time has come and gone. since the NYT played a substantial part in that turn of events, (“you may rest assured that we’re fair and impartial. the fact we’ve endorsed *every single democrat* running for president in the last 52 YEARS is merely a coincidence!”), that just makes it that much more amusing.

Which is why many people wouldn’t mind seeing the Times go the way of the dodo. They believe it illustrates the fact that we are already living in a world without healthy newspapers. The Times, and the other unhealthy newspapers we have now, are taking up “journalistic space” that could be better used by more competent publications. The sooner the source of the infection is cleared away and we get to that newer world of better newspapers, the better.

We do need real reporters to dig up actual news. Unfortunately, the current system is pretty poor at providing them.

I did a little real reporting on a local story because the Arizona Republic’s “reporter” simply too one side’s press release and reported it without the slightest fact checking, which would have shown it to be wrong.

I don’t see the journalism “profession” reforming itself, and it’s hard to see what will replace it.

On the financial side, the Times has about $2 billion in debt to refianance over the next 4 years. Current debt is currently rated junk by one rating service and the other is not far behind. They own the Boston Globe which they purchased 14 years ago for $1.4 billion. It has already been written down to $500 million. They will write off another $150 million according to recent press reports. And they still can’t sell it. They will have to cut or eliminate their dividend to satisfy their creditors. They simply are not generating the earnings to come close to the current dividend. And the trend line is pointing steeply down. Their stock is $10/share and was briefly under $9 earlier this week. It was $45/share 5 years ago.

Journalistically the Times has lost all credibility for impartiality. From this they will never recover. A whore can never regain her reputation. Their campaign coverage is shamelessly one sided. The Times suffered through a journalistic ethics scandal 4 years ago when a minority reporter was coddled by the papers top editors despite valid complaints of falsifying stories from sub editors and reporters. Only when a reporter from another paper publicly documented Jayson Blair’s plaigerism of her stories, did the Times look into it. They found half of his most recent 50 stories were false. He subsequently left the paper along with the the two top editors. This was done under the uber-liberal management culture of Pinch.

In all liklihood Pinch will be asked by the board to relinquish his position of Publisher and Chairman. Almost certainly this will come before the shareholders meeting next April, perhaps much sooner.

The fatal flaw for the Times is the dual sharehoder status. The family controls 8 of 13 seats with less than 20% of the stock. Pinch and his spokesmen have repeatedly said there will be no change, despite an attempt to force the issue by outsiders a year and a half ago. They family and especially Pinch wants to maintain control.

But the Times is near the tipping point where no amount of capital or change of ownership can save it. By stubbornly resisting a change in the B stock, it will be too late when the family finally caves. And despite the allure of the brand, there aren’t many who would buy in at this point even if they could get control. The prospect of losing several hundred million a year just doesn’t cut it. The best match would be the Washington Post Co., but they don’t want to increase their exposure to disaster by doubling up in the newspaper business.

Yes it’s a sad fate to ponder, but Pinch has squandered the paper’s future.