Reply #14: Investors target the New York Times

[ozymandius]

Investors led by Morgan Stanley on Tuesday mounted an attack on the leadership of the New York Times Company, and called for a removal of the dual share structure that has allowed the Sulzberger family to preserve its control over the influential media group.

As a symbol of the dissatisfaction, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, which owns more than 5 per cent of the company's shares, witheld its ballots in elections on Tuesday for the board of directors. According to one lawyer present at the media group's investor meeting, other sympathetic investors did the same, bringing the total of withheld ballots to 31 per cent.

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The campaign is another sign of the turmoil in the newspaper industry, whose future has come into question as readers and advertisers flock to the internet.

It has also laid bare the tensions among shareholders at family-controlled media companies, such as the New York Times and Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

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