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

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."

Now it's the home of Alessandro Saracino and wife Maria de la Fe. Mr. Saracino works at is a partner at Pavia & Harcourt LLP, toiling in the firm's litigation and arbitration practice group, which specializes in intellectual property. And it must pay well, because 1010 Fifth only allows 40 percent of a unit's purchase price to be financed—the rest has to be paid in cold, hard cash.

That said, Mr. and Ms. Saracino did get a bit of a deal on the co-op: it was listed for $14 million at the beginning of December, and the Sulzberger heirs were apparently quite eager to sell, even at a discount, because the listing entered contract less than two weeks after it was put on the market.

Perhaps the younger Sulzbergers just wanted to put Manhattan behind them. Judith Sulzberger's sons sold their San Remo pad in 2011; Sam Dolnick, Punch's grand-nephew, bought a $1.9 million townhouse in Carroll Gardens in 2012, and Arthur G. Sulzberger III bought a more restrained $610,000 one-bedroom in Cobble Hill in the same year.

Sounds like somebody's been reading the Times' trend pieces.

Junior, though, has stayed true to his blue-blooded uptown heritage: the New York Times publisher owns a $3.9 million penthouse on the Upper West Side.

A few minutes ago, the building was struck by lightning...

...At least according to a bunch of people who saw it and Tweeted about it (and also, some folks in the Times building):

Elsewhere in odd forces of nature commenting on the new business leader of the New York Times, Michael Wolff weighed in with his take for The Guardian, best summed up by the last line of the piece:

So, Mark … lunch?

There were also some well-considered moments of thought hidden throughout Wolff's take. For example, he pointed out the fact that Sulzberger is still the "top operating executive" at the paper, even if Thompson has it in his title:

The peculiar compromise, leaving Sulzberger in place with full executive authority, but not giving him the CEO title, has meant: a) no reputable No 1 would take this job knowing they were really No 2; b) that it would be better for Sulzberger if that person who did ultimately take the job was unqualified for it; and c) that Sulzberger still has needed to find someone for the job who was not a joke, or nonentity – someone with some sort of stature (even imported).

Edmund Lee of Bloomberg Businessweek also noted of the pick:

The end result is the CEO has less power than the chairman, said Alex Jones, author of "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times."

"The position of CEO is a little bit deceptive at the Times because the operational head of the company is the chairman, and that’s Arthur Sulzberger," Jones said in an interview. "The CEO’s job will be whatever Arthur decides it should be."

Lee's report also observed that Thompson's experience fending off Rupert Murdoch's British news properties may have also earned him points with the Sulzberger family.

As for points lost, Roland Li at the International Business Times weighed in, having already talked to some Times employees regarding the pick. One was not exactly psyched:

"He's done a decent job with the BBC's site, but nothing that any other adequate media executive wouldn't do, and certainly nothing exceptional," said a Times staffer. "The newsroom is skeptical because he is known less as a media innovator than a hatchet man for a legacy brand, and the BBC's business model is nothing like ours."

Skeptical of a hatchet man? You don't say.

Surely the world will get to know Thompson more by the way his presence is (or isn't) felt by newsroom insiders, but until then, we'll just have to go with media-on-media reactions to the pick, or by how he's being received by the forces of nature and/or gods of hellfire, which may or may not result in that wonderful Renzo Piano building being felled by a freak solar flare hail storm of rainy inferno in the coming days. For what it's worth, however, since we started writing this post, the sun has come out.

Take it to mean nothing. Or everything.

fkamer@observer.com  | @weareyourfek 

Sulzberger. (Getty)

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.

“We put out a great newspaper every day,” the kicker went. “But outside the newsroom, at the corporate level, we’re sailing on a ghost ship.”

To some, the slow pace and hostile tenor of the company's contract negotiations reflect discordance and disorganization on its executive level. A spokesperson for the Times declined to comment (except to say that they look forward to reaching a full and fair agreement with the guild), but Ms. Abramson addressed the concerns head-on to the newsroom.

“Worries about the current state of The Times and our industry are natural,” Ms. Abramson said, according to a transcript of her remarks shared internally. “But you need to know that Arthur and the company have a vision and strategy to return us to a path of growth.”

Mr. Sulzberger did not hold his own “State of the Times” meeting this year (it might have gotten a little too “Lynch Pinch,” perhaps), nor was he in the newsroom for the Pulitzer celebration. But Mr. Abramson articulated his vision and strategy.

The plan, according to her remarks, is to “expand from our core.” That is, to harvest profits organically from the quality work they’re already doing. Some staffers have been put in working groups to find ways to expand and monetize key areas like mobile, engagement, social media, video and international. The Times will also branch into international native-language editions with special news of regional importance, independent of the International Herald Tribune.

“It’s an exhilarating vision,” she said, “and I’m excited.”

The Times has been without captain since December, when CEO Janet Robinson (a schoolteacher turned advertising exec who was once a favorite of Mr. Sulzberger’s) was pushed out, amid rumors she had clashed with Times Co. vice chairman Michael Golden (a Sulzberger-Ochs cousin) over the sale of the company’s Regional Media Group, then in Mr. Golden’s portfolio. Mr. Sulzberger became interim CEO as headhunting firm Spencer Stuart were brought in to conduct the search for Ms. Robinson’s successor.

Since then, Times Co. stock, already battered by the recession, slipped below $7 per share and has not recovered, despite promising news about the performance of the company’s one-year-old digital subscription model, the sale of its assets and the early repayment of its debt to Carlos Slim.

Douglas Arthur, an analyst at Evercore Partners, attributed the slump to the the so-called leadership vacuum.

“The market has spoken,” he told The Observer.  “The stock has tanked and other stocks with similar issues have not gone down.”

In the early spring, rumors circulated that Mr. Sulzberger would become CEO permanently. Anyone brought in, after all, would just answer directly to Mr. Sulzberger. He’s known to be a hands-on defender of the newsroom, the high operating costs of which are hard to justify to investors amid contracting advertising revenue. And he’s under pressure from family members on the Times Co. board of directors, who stand to cash in if the Times reinstates its stock dividends, which have not been paid since 2008.

Oh, and the new CEO’s first order of business would be to take care of that volatile and emotional labor battle going on downstairs.

Is Times CEO a job only an Ochs heir could love?

According to Capital NY, Mr. Sulzberger dodged the question when posed to him by an analyst on an earnings call.

“I have no doubt that we will find the right candidate, and I’m looking forward to that,” he reportedly said.

Shareholders are looking forward to it too.

“The market is very eager to see a new CEO,” Mr. Arthur said. “An outsider who can bring in a digital perspective, who’s got some knowledge of the newspaper business.

“It’s important to have some independence from the family,” he went on. “It is still a decent size company and its got this huge build-up in cash.”

Earlier this month, the company sold its remaining stake in the Boston Red Sox for $63 million, having already sold a third of its shares for $30 million in February. In December, the sale of the Times Co.’s Regional Media Group yielded $143 million.

“It’s burning a hole in their pocket,” Mr. Arthur said. “Who’s going to make a decision about it? If you’re going to be a growth company, you need a growth CEO.”

To others, the cash influx, akin to a dowager selling her pearls, was less reassuring.

In Ms. Abramson’s remarks, she offered the “sobering” fact that The New York Times Media Group revenues had dropped by $500 million since 2006. The operating profits of individual media companies within the group—whose members have changed since 2006—are not reported.

One thing is certain, though: the company made money available to pay Ms. Robinson a generous exit package, galvanizing newsroom dissent.

A widely passed-around Columbia Journalism Review infographic showed what Ms. Robinson’s $21 million “Golden parachute” could buy the paper of record: 230 starting reporters' salaries, 14 years of Baghdad bureau operations, or Tom Friedman’s fantasy travel budget. (Bloomberg News later reported that her severance package was closer to $23.7 million.)

Ms. Abramson reminded staff that while the bullpen is about as big as it was ten years ago, the business side continues to take haircuts, most recently with 50 layoffs across finance, human resources and legal.

“I think all of you know that Arthur has fought like a tiger to protect newsroom jobs,” she said.

Indeed, one side effect of the increasingly lopsided company is that for the first time in institutional memory, the Guild is not dominated by advertising staffers, and the typically single-minded newsroom is heavily engaged in the contract negotiations. Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse drew up a flyer explaining that management's "draconian" proposal amounted to a fifteen percent cut in compensation after inflation. It was distributed by Guild members protesting the annual shareholder's meeting on April 25.

“I’ve heard numerous colleagues say that as a result of management’s hardline negotiating stance, the newsroom seems angrier, the gap between the newsroom and upper management greater, than at any time in decades,” Mr. Greenhouse’s flyer said.

For those keeping score, that would mean things are worse than during the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller scandals (2003 and 2005, respectively). This at a time when the paper of record has many reasons to feel encouraged.

The paywall erected last year brought the paper 500,000 paid digital subscribers. It didn’t make up for declining ad revenue but it proved consumers will pay for quality online journalism. And, against financial odds and institutional inertia, the Times had become a 21st century news organization.

In her address last week, Ms. Abramson said the newsroom’s coverage of President Obama’s support of gay marriage stood out to her as an example of “how deeply we have grown as a newsroom and how much more all of you are doing, as we create new and richer layers of journalism.”

At least five reporters contributed across various desks, updating earlier and faster than anyone outside ABC, the network where the president made the announcement. They pulled reader comments and tweets to provide interactive elements and Jim Roberts created one of the Times' first ever live video broadcasts, hosted by Megan Liberman. The site broke a commenting record.

That kind of 24-7 commitment helps set the Times apart, but it also fuels a sense of betrayal over demands by labor and operations vice president Terry Hayes and Times counsel Bernard Plum.

In their March proposal, for example, they offered to concede to an earlier demand to move from a 35- to 40-hour work week. To the reporters who were already working 50- and 60-hour weeks without filing for overtime, the move smacked of disingenuousness.

A pension subcommittee has been meeting with outside actuaries to explore plans that would spread the risk of their proposed 401(k)-only plan between the Times and employers. Some Times reporters involved in negotiations favor a profit-sharing formula that would keep costs down while giving employees a chance to reap what they’ve sown.

“In our view it’s kind of amazing that our members are willing to explore that,” Guild president Bill O’Meara told The Observer.

But really, the lion’s share of the angst surrounding the contract negotiations seems to stem from their tone, which doesn’t jibe with some reporters’ sense that they belong to a family committed to defending journalism, united by a greater cause than turning a profit.

Mr. Greenhouse wrote that he, for one, was sorry to see so much of the anger and resentment directed at Mr. Sulzberger and his family, but that Mr. Sulzberger was “ill-served” by Mr. Hayes and other negotiators.

“The message to The New York Times is let’s end the familial strife,” Mr. Barry said in his Guild video. “Remember who we are, as this kind of extended family doing the best journalism in the world, and let’s settle this and move on.”

Guild members have called for Mr. Sulzberger to step in, but with the family’s patriarch keeping quiet, they are left to assume Mr. Hayes does his bidding and, on Friday, Ms. Abramson did his talking.

She provided some relief by frankly addressing the tension, saying she was “disturbed” by the reports from the labor talks.

“Whatever the tone has been,” her remarks said, “please know that at every level of this company, there is admiration of and recognition for all that you do.”

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

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.

“Last year was a transformative one for The Times as we began to charge for digital access to our content," publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. said in the announcement. "Today, close to a half million people are now paying for digital content from The Times and the IHT. We knew that readers placed a high value on our journalism, and we anticipated they would respond positively to our digital subscription packages. Our commitment to all of our subscribers, both print and digital, is that we will continue to invest in and evolve our journalism and our products, and we will remain a source of trustworthy news, information and high-quality opinion for many years to come.”

To say thanks to all those who said, "Information may want to be free but you can't always get what you want," the company is offering subscribers a free 12-week digital gift subscription to pass along to a friend or loved one on the other side of the wall.

Off the Record had called to inquire about a prominent leitmotif in Ms. Collins bi-weekly op-ed columns, known to her followers as “dog on the roof,” or “Crate Gate.”

The allusion appeared yesterday, as it does just about any time the columnist writes about G.O.P. primary candidate Mitt Romney. She wrote that Mr. Romney’s latest shot at rival Newt Gingrich—“Zany is not what we need in a president”—was a safe stance, seeing as no one could characterize the glaringly square Mormon as such.

“Unless it was when he drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the station wagon. (‘Hey, Mister, you got an Irish setter on top of your car. What are you, zany or something?’),” she wrote.

With political coverage dominating the op-ed page on the eve of the GOP primary, even casual readers remark upon how frequently Ms. Collins deploys the anecdote, transforming it from a biographical footnote to an emasculating epithet. Fellow Times employees have certainly noticed—a handful have posted pictures of the dog to her office wall, she said.

The anecdote first captivated Ms. Collins when it was published in The Boston Globe during the former Massachusetts governor’s first primary bid in 2007.

On a family road trip to Canada, the story goes, Mr. Romney strapped the family Irish setter Seamus’s crate to the roof, inducing doggie diarrhea that soiled the back windshield and sent the Romney boys into hysterics.

Compromising his anal-retentive itinerary, Mr. Romney “coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station,” the Globe wrote.

“There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.”

Ms. Collins was less outraged by the possible animal abuse than she was “tickled” by the way the way the story had been cast politically.

“One of his sons told this story as an example of his organizational skills,” she explained.

Seamus has long since passed on, but Ms. Collins carries his torch in her columns, where she has mentioned the incident no less than 30 times since its August 2007 debut (“Haunted by Seamus,” the column was aptly titled) and virtually every time Mr. Romney’s name appears.

She is dead set on bringing it up in every Romney discussion until the primary is over, she told Off the Record.

“Then I cannot do it anymore,” she said.

Not that anyone is stopping her. Op-ed columnists get little more than a copy edit before going to print, Ms. Collins explained.

“[Opinions editor] Andy Rosenthal has not expressed any remorse,” she said.

“Dog on the roof” has even become a jokey refrain in The Conversation, her weekly transcribed chats with David Brooks. He has conspired with Ms. Collins to work it in.

In one particularly whimsical installment, the two envisioned Mr. Romney and Rick Perry trapped in a snowy cave in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—the only circumstances in which Jon Huntsman could feasibly win the state—lounging in animal skins and making cave paintings.

“Romney would paint saber-tooth tigers, riding in cages on the top of his car. (There, got that in),” Mr. Brooks wrote.

“Thanks,” Ms. Collins replied, “I was wondering where I could fit in the dog on the roof.”

Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. did mention Crate Gate once, Ms. Collins admitted, when he noted that she had revived the tale for Mr. Romney’s second bid for the GOP nomination, despite having vowed in print not to mention it again.

(Ms. Collins remembered no such promise, but did lament losing her excuse to bring it up when Mr. Romney dropped out of the 2008 race. “Worst of all, I’m going to have to get through the rest of the year without ever again referring to the fact that Romney once drove to Canada with the family dog, Seamus, strapped to the roof of the car,” she wrote at the time.)

“He felt that was a breach,” she said.

To Ms. Collins’ mind, the running gag brings levity to the election grind, which, given the state of things, can get a little grim.

“If you bring in animals it does cheer people up,” she noted.

Judith Sulzberger (Photo from Patrick McMullan)

Like their newspaper's readership, it seems the Sulzberger family has a particular affinity for the Upper West Side. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. recently bought a place at the Dorilton for $3.9 million, and now his cousins have been involved in a nearby sale for more than twice that amount. Daniel and James Cohen, whose maternal grandfather was Arthur Hays Sulzberger, have sold an apartment at The San Remo, city records show.

The brothers, the sons of Judith Sulzberger, who passed away in February of this year, had received the two-bedroom, three-bath apartment in 2008 through a family trust under their mother's name. Although professionally she eschewed her family's business and became a doctor, Judith Sulzberger remained involved with the company as a director of the Times from 1974-2000, and, of course, a principal owner of the billion dollar organization until she died.

It seems that while she donned a lab coat and poured over microscopes  by day, in the evenings Sulzberger retired to a rather sumptuous roost. The home has a 467-square-foot  living room, a master suite with a dressing room, and a dining room which comes "replete with herringbone wood floors, high ceilings and meticulously preserved architectural details," according to a listing from Corcoran agents Robert Browne, Chris Kann and Gregory Sullivan.

They buyers of the property are Irving and Judith Shafran, a lawyer and a book editor, who previously lived in a full floor apartment at 778 Park.  The couple, who SEC filings show had invested with Bernie Madoff's firm, put their apartment on the market in December, 2009. The Shafrans doubtless breathed a huge sigh of relief when the residence, originally listed for $24 million, entered contract this past May. With the extra capital practically secured (the only hurdle being the co-op board's blessing of their prospective buyer), the Shafrans made their move. According to StreetEasy, they entered contract Sulzberger's former home in July.

While more modestly sized, the Sulzberger place does surpass the Shafran's old Park Avenue apartment in at least one measure: height. Located on the 25th floor of the building (their previous apartment was on the 18th), the couple's new digs boast views of the park, river and George Washington Bridge. And let's not forget the light! The home "is flooded with magnificent morning sunlight from the east and mesmerizing sunsets from the west through a total of 19 windows," according to the listing.

Daniel and James Cohen originally listed their mother's place for $12.5 million when it hit the market in April, bringing the price down to $11.5 million before the Shafrans snagged it for the $10.25 million.

Any good listings in here?

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.The liberal lion landed at the Dorilton, a Beaux Arts beauty at the corner of Broadway and 71st Street with limestone details as florid as a Sam Sifton restaurant review--just check out those caryatids! Yet the pinched penthouse has a modern feel with an unusual 25-foot pyramidal skylight that lights up at night and has more of a David Pogue feel to it. There is also a huge terrace almost as big as the six-room spread.

In a multimedia spirit the platform-agnostic publisher must admire, Douglas Elliman brokers Ann Cutbill Lenane and Deirdre DeRisi even fimed a video listing of the space:

Mr. Sulzberger paid $3.9 million for the three-bedroom co-op, after it came on the market for $4.5 million in December. The sellers are Paul Ezekiel, an investment banker, and Tanya Kiskanyan, the COO at Thompson Reuters for six months last year and now a private consultant.

All of this could have been avoided, of course, if Mr. Sulzberger had only read The Times Real Estate section this week. The lead feature was all about how celebrities are turning to LLCs and trusts to hide their identities.

Read past Manhattan Transfers here. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The line of questioning has been predictable: Here comes the web encroaching on traditional media business models--how do you tame it for your own financial ends?

Mr. Sulzberger, on his first answer, chose to emphasize the connection that the Old Gray Lady has with its long-time print subscribers, never mind the web.

"Print circulation is not going away," he said. "What we're seeing and what I think everyone is seeing is an erosion in single-copy sales. For core subscribers to print--and those are people who have received home delivery for two years or more--our studies show that if you are a home delivery subscriber to The New York Times for two years or more, we pretty much have you for life. And that number's been going up. That number four or five years ago was 650,000 people. That number today is almost 840,000 people.

"That is an enormously stable base from which to continue to leverage our journalistic activities."

Mr. Sulzberger was later asked to project The Times' business models a few years down the road. He demurred and then plunged into an analogy.

"I don't know if any of you are river rafters," he said, "but it's one of the sports that I most enjoy. And if you've done it, you know that if you come around the turn you know that the most dangerous thing you can do is say, 'oh, the next turn is to the left' or 'the next rapids are to the right.' If you don't stay flexible and united on your team, you're going to find yourself making the wrong call and going down the wrong way.

Soon it was Robert Thomson's turn. The Wall Street Journal managing editor and Dow Jones chief, in response to a question on the overall strategy regarding the paper's recent expansions (Greater New York, the magazine, et al), cited the Journal's rise in ad revenues and its pay model--one paywall, many things on the other side of it--and then ankled toward Mr. Sulzberger's analogical territory.

"There are two basic trends at work in our world: digitization and globalization," Mr. Thomson said. "And if you raft with those currents, you'll be carried a long way. If you attempt to swim against them, you won't get anywhere."

Betabeat then split for the bathroom. Kidding! The first-ever e-G8 summit wraps tonight. Our previous coverage here: http://tinyurl.com/3u39ljy

tacitelli@observer.com :: @tacitelli

- So, apparently the Titanic was sunk by human error. Nice try. We've seen Titanic enough times to know it was HUBRIS, plain and simple, that brought that baby down. 

- There are a bunch of people named Sarah Palin who aren't grandmother to Tripp and pseudo-mother-in-law to hunky Playgirl models. Sucks to be them.

- Do not put this bag on your arm, leather and metal carwash edition. 

- This is just cool. Art blogger Paddy Johnson is raising money to make "a DJ Battle Record which pits the sounds of art works exhibited in Manhattan (Side A) against those in Brooklyn (Side B)."

Business Insider has said for a while that this is the way the Times must go. Henry Blodget called Sulzberger's statement a concession and wrote that while Sulzberger's statement "sounds obvious," it's actually a "big deal." Later in his post, Blodget elaborated:

We estimate that the NYT currently spends about $200 million a year on its newsroom and generates about $150 million of online revenue. If the paywall is highly successful--attracting, say, 1 million subscribers who pay $100 a year--this will add another $100 million of online subscription revenue (assuming the company doesn't lose ad revenue). With $250 million of revenue, the NYT might be able to sustain newsroom costs of about $100 million.

Without what Blodget calls "a Bloomberg-like sugar-daddy" to run the organization in the red, Business Insider is certain the NYT will have stop printing on paper and undergo a restructuring.

The Times still plans to implement its paywall in 2011. Sulzberger conceded details of how it will work are still in flux, but during the conference he also confirmed that the Times and Google are working together on something called First Click Free, which will keep the paper, in Sulzberger's words, "part of the open web ecosystem."

Sulzberger's statement comes the same day the paper's stock surged following rumors of a buyout.

[Business Insider/EditorsWeblog.org]