This is an interesting picture by Jin Lee for Bloomberg News:

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. chairman and publisher of The New York Times Co., departs the company’s shareholders meeting at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York, Tuesday, April 24, 2007 … using a back exit door.

Just in case.

New York Times Co. shareholders, led by Morgan Stanley, withheld 42 percent of their votes from directors to protest the Sulzberger family’s control over the company.

Five years ago, The New York Times stock was $51.88 (July 5, 2002).

This Friday, the same shares were traded at $18.87.

Not the best financial performance for a first-class newspaper.

The Sulzberger family has a problem.

They need money.

But Wall Street is not listening.

The stock is so cheap that almost any rival could buy all the available shares for next to nothing.

You don’t need to be a Google to buy all this stock.

The problem and the solution here is, again, the family.

“Trying to assess the true importance of the Internet now is like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk if they were aware of the potential of American Airlines Advantage Miles,” said The New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.

Sorry, but Yahoo!, MySpace, Google, Flickr, YouTube or Facebook, for example, are quite mature developments and the slow response of many traditional media publishers shows that they are not the Wright brothers of the Internet.

Today, The New York Times stock is lower than ever.

Around $18 right now.

Going down again and again after Morgan Stanley sold its nearly 10.4 million shares in the newspaper.

The newsroom is producing a first-class product, but the business management is doing a third-class job.

Facebook is not another Google is a great column by John Naughton.

I was very impressed by the news about Facebook and then I asked our expert, Christian Oliver, and he responded like John Naughton:

Nothing beats meeting people…

I am glad to be in agreement with our British colleague.

And against the current opinion trend.

What about a mega-merge between Google and Apple?

Apple has a market capitalization of $107 billion.

Google’s value stands at $160 billion.

Assume Apple holders would get a hefty premium for their shares – let’s call if 40% – and you end up with something close to a merger of equals.

The last New York magazine cover story on iGod fuels this idea.

And the logos are ready…

There is a blog that sees the merge happening before 2012 after these steps…

…and this Apple product portfolio:

If this is the case, how can a serious newspaper publish such a piece?

Jeff Jarvis goes ballistic and responds here for all of us:

“Don’t blame Google for your bad management.”

The American university tradition of “publish or perish” becomes “publish and perish” and perhaps the Berkeley Faculty needs to reconsider the need of such old-fashioned brilliant minds.

No, Google is not killing newspapers.

We are.

If Google’s logo can be different…

Why not newspapers’?