Responding to speculation that his newspaper would be next, New York Times Publisher and Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has issued a flat "the Times is not for sale" statement.
Sulzberger's declaration follows this week's announcement that the Graham family is selling The Washington Post to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. That sale increased the talk about the nation's other major newspaper family — the Sulzbergers — getting out of the distressed business.
But Sulzberger says in the statement (released with Times Vice Chairman Michael Golden) that "the Times is not for sale, and the trustees of the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust and the rest of the family are united in our commitment to work together with the company's board, senior management and employees to lead The New York Times forward into our global and digital future."
The person most often speculated about when it comes to buying the
Times is billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
New York magazine writes that
"of course, it's possible that someday Bloomberg will make the Ochs-Sulzberger family an offer it can't refuse. (Reuters
reports Bezos paid four times what the
Post is worth.) But for the time being Bloomberg is said to prefer the
Financial Times, if he does in fact decide to expand his media empire."
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