By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/29 6:04pm

Manhattan Transfers

No word on whether the Times globe comes with the apartment.

Breaking News! Punch Sulzberger’s Old Fifth Avenue Pad Sells For $12.5 M.

The newspaper industry may be in secular decline, but at least the Sulzbergers’ bank accounts will be buoyed in the coming months: the late Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, Sr.‘s palatial pad just sold for a cool $12.5 million, according to city records.

The eighth-floor corner unit at 1010 Fifth Avenue, a 15-story limestone prewar, has three bedrooms, including the master, which overlook the Metropolitan Museum of Art, plus another overlooking East 82nd Street. And it also has no shortage of storage space: we count 18 closets, including a few walk-ins (the Times may need to find a new place to keep its archives).

Sheila Ellis at Sotheby’s was tight-lipped about her listing when we called, which she shared with Patricia Wheatley, though the duo wasn’t shy about touting its bold-faced bonafides in the listing, which described the co-op as “the home of one of the world’s most prestigious and well known families.” Read More

By Foster Kamer 8/15/12 5:15pm

TIMES OF THE TIMES

NYT

New York Times CEO’s Appointment ‘Celebrated’ by Blast of Lightning to Newspaper

Yesterday, The New York Times Co. named the BBC’s outgoing Director General Mark Thompson to the post of CEO. The company had been without a new chief executive since Janet Robinson was tossed from the coop with a golden parachute at her back in December; Times Co. chairman and publisher Arthur ­Sulzberger Jr. served in the position as an interim chief executive up until yesterday, when Thompson was named.

A few minutes ago, the building was struck by lightning… Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 8:30pm

Newspapers

Sulzberger. (Getty)

Feel the Pinch! Sans CEO, New York Times Stock Slumps, Labor Battle Grinds On

Last Friday, New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson addressed the newsroom troops in a town hall meeting. The semi-annual event, known as “Throw Stuff at Bill” under her predecessor Bill Keller, had been rebranded: “Grill Jill.”

“The past few months have been a time of tremendous creative energy in our newsroom, sadness and some tension,” her remarks began.

No kidding.

Times reporters have been without a contract for more than a year and some of them say morale is an historic low. The Newspaper Guild that represents them is engaged in a protracted and contentious battle over the company’s pension plan—a crucial retention incentive and a staggering legacy cost—that has dialed up the normal grumblings of know-it-all newsmen to an impassioned fever pitch.

Reporters signed open letters criticizing chairman, publisher, Ochs heir and acting CEO Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., and were filmed protesting the sacrosanct Page One meeting. Pulitzer Prize-winners Amy Harmon, Dan Barry and Kevin Sack appeared in a video put out by the Guild that publicly reminded management that Bloomberg, Reuters and the Huffington Post pay competitively and—having already lured an unprecedented number of Times reporters to their digital shores—win fancy prizes now too.

Before that, a long-simmering e-mail chain among a couple hundred senior reporters bubbled over into Gawker’s pages. The site published one especially vivid installment in which science reporter Don McNeil accused Mr. Sulzberger of dilettantish leadership, citing his Himalayan excursion with leadership guru Michael Useem. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 3/20/12 11:02am

Anniversaries

We missed you, superliteral pay wall clip art! (image via besttechie.net)

On Its First Birthday, New York Times Pay Wall Gets a Little Taller

Beginning in April, The New York Times will offer non-subscribers just ten free articles a month, down from the original 20, the Times Media Group announced today. Shared and searched links still won’t count toward the ten-article limit.

The company was apparently encouraged by the 454,000 nytimes.com users who chose to pay for a digital subscription in the year since the pay wall was put up. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/08/11 1:32am

Manhattan Transfers

Any good listings in here?

Sulzberger Jr. Pinches Pointy Penthouse on UWS

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has erected a paywall around his newpaper’s website to help keep out freeloading readers. When it comes to gossips and paparazzi, “Pinch” prefers an Upper West Side penthouse.

Back in February 2008, Mr. Sulzberger handed over his Central Park West duplex at Harperley Hall (home to quite a few media moguls) to his ex-wife Gail Gregg, though a flack claimed at the time that there would be no Sulzberger divorce. According to a deed from the transfer, he then moved into a boomerang-shaped studio atop 155 West 70th Street, which rented for $6,500 a month, according to StreetEasy.

Now Mr. Sulzberger has found a permanent penthouse to hang up his ink-stained suspenders in. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 2:07pm

e-G8

Sulzberger on The Times’ Print Lifers…. Dueling Water Analogies for Web Media

It’s Day Two at the e-G8 tech summit in Paris, and the main event is a standing-room-only panel going on now (8:52 a.m. New York time) about disintermediation (“Is the Internet Relaunching or Killing the Media?”), featuring Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times and Robert Thomson of The Wall Street Journal. Interestingly enough, from the audience’s perspective, Mr. Read More