Pinch's pocketbook gets pinched

Pinch Sulzberger, Chairman of the New York Times Company, had his total pay cut by 15.8% according to an AP report.

The New York Times Co. paid Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. a salary and bonus of $1.6 million for 2005.

The New York—based media company also said he received options on 150,000 shares and got a grant of restricted stock units valued at $817,500.

Those figures compared with a salary and bonus of $1.9 million the previous year, with grants of 59,000 options and restricted stock valued at $433,840, the company said Friday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company stock languishes and the core franchise is in decline, milked of profits to support other newer businesses. The board evidently believes there is a good chance that the strategy of publishing a national edition will pay off, or maybe the Discovery Times cable channel will. Or maybe the Boston Globe and other local papers it just acquired will have somehow buck the trend down. Or the internet business will start making serious money. Or something.

The board must believe that longer term, things are getting better. They have actually increased the size of Pinch's grant of stock options and restricted stock. These will pay off if the company's stock rises in value.

Janet L. Robinson, who became the Times' president and chief executive at the end of 2004, got an outright salar increase, but considering her promotion, not that much more money.

...her salary and bonus increase by $100,000 to nearly $1.4 million. Robinson, who had been the company's chief operating officer, got restricted stock units valued at $2 million and options on 149,000 shares for 2005.

Robinson had received $414,120 in restricted stock the previous year, and options on 55,000 shares.

It looks like the board of directors, controlled by the family's super—duper special voting rights stock, continues to buy into the strategy Pinch has charted: hoping that national circulation and advertising revenue can sustain the editorial budget, as the metropolitan New York print edition continues to decline.

Newspapering is a tough business these days, and Pinch upped the ante when he bought the publisher of the Boston Globe, making his shareholders even more dependent on another Northeastern metropolitan daily, in the only state in the Union to lose population.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman

Thomas Lifson  3 05 06