Old Grey Lady Needs a Bailout

The New York Times has borrowed $225 million against its midtown Manhattan headquarters, according to the International Herald Tribune via Drudge.

The Times has watched its circulation and its stock race toward the bottom. The stock has been downgraded as below investment quality. That's right, the Times stock is officially junk. Trading at $7.64 when the market closed on Friday, it costs less than a pizza. Personally, I'd take the pizza.

To be sure, the Times is confronting the same obsolescence that all Old Media face: the Internet. But the so-called Paper of Record has not done itself any favors running some of the garbage it passes for news and commentary -- like Bill Ayers' rationalization of his terrorist days:

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war. (Emphasis added.)

Well, by that reasoning, those 19 young men who flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were only carrying out "symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war" and the like.

Ayers failed to mention that the Weather Underground actually killed people, and the New York Times not only gave him a pass, they publicized his propaganda.

That's why its stock is junk. For all its challenges lately, the market still reflects value.

H/t: Hotair and Drudge