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.