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TIMES CO. EXECS GET BIG PAY RAISES; NOT AS BIG AS THOUGHT Sulzberger, who took no stock in ’07-’08, goes up to total $6M in ’09 TIMES CO. EXECS GET BIG PAY RAISES; NOT AS BIG AS THOUGHT Sulzberger, who took no stock in ’07-’08, goes up to total $6M in ’09 Slammed in the general media for “doubling” the pay package of its chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., The New York Times Co. last week released a list of how it compensated its top executives in 2009, saying Sulzberger’s total pay for 2009 was just under $6 million. What the critics failed to take into consideration, though, was the fact that in 2007 and 2008, Sulzberger had taken no stock awards and no stock options, which together in 2009 make up more than half his total compensation. This is the conundrum faced by the compensation committees of boards of directors of companies that have super-voting stock: do you compensate the controlling family members as though the company were to hire them on the open market or do you compensate them as though they are rich and don’t need the money? (The Washington Post Co. Donald Graham famously takes the latter tactic: in the 18 years of recorded business that Graham has been top executive of The Post Co., his salary has stayed at $400,000 per year, a veritable pittance among chief executives. In 2008, though, he was forced by his board to take a $400,000 bonus.) The Times Co. — which like The Post Co. is controlled by a second-class of stock that elects the majority of the members of the board of directors — has tried to find a middle ground between the two camps. Sulzburger’s salary, according to Times Co. filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been just a bit under $1.1 million for the last three years, somewhat analogous to the pay received by his company’s chief executive, Janet Robinson, who has gotten roughly $1 million in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Robinson’s total 2009 compensation was just less than $6.3 million. But in 2007 and 2008 — troubled years in the newspaper business in general and generally bad at The Times Co. — Sulzberger took no stock or stock options, while in 2008 Robinson took $2.2 million in stock awards and options. She took no stock compensation in 2007. Another Times Co. family member to eschew stock awards was Michael Golden, who is the company’s vice chairman and a cousin to Sulzberger. Golden’s base salary has averaged around $620,000 over the last three years, but he too took no stock compensation in 2007 or 2008. Golden’s total 2009 take was a bit more than $2.4 million. All Times Co. executives took a 3¾-percent base pay cut in 2009 when compared to their 2007-2008 salary levels, but all also ended up with larger overall compensation packages than they did in 2007 or 2008. Sulzberger’s total package increased more than 150 percent between 2008 and 2009, while Robinson’s went up 31.8 percent and Golden’s gained 60.4 percent. The compensation packages didn’t bother Moody’s Investors Service, which on Wednesday lifted its rating of The Times Co. from “negative” to “stable.” The credit rating service, which said the rating effects about $325 million in debt, believes that though newspaper ad revenue will continue to drop in the high single digits through the end of the year, but that the revenue was “stabilize” in 2011. In other Times Co. news, also last week Sulzberger told a business conference that he doesn’t expect his family to sell or split the company. The Times Co. chairman was responding to a flurry of rumors over the last month that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú might attempt to buy out the Ochs-Sulzberger family. Slim “is a quality investor,” Sulzberger told the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Media Summit in New York on Wednesday and that his family is “delighted” to have him on board. “He has invested because he believes in our mission and he believes in the quality of what we do and that his shares will in fact rise,” Bloomberg News quoted Sulzberger as saying. Slim became an investor in the company 13 months ago, when he provided it with $250 million in loans, and now owns seven percent of the company’s regular shares with warrants that could bring him up to 16 percent of the company. Lastly in Times Co. news, today the company launched a new trade advertising campaign it calls “Numbers.” The campaign compares the demographics of the company’s flagship New York Times with its competitor, the Wall Street Journal. “The New York Times has a very loyal and influential audience in New York and this campaign demonstrates that strength across various categories,” said Yasmin Namini, senior vice president, marketing and circulation, for the Times. “The numbers tell the story.” And you didn’t have to be the member of a newspaper-owning family to get a bonus in the newspaper business last week (though certainly it would have helped): staffers at Southern California’s Orange County Register each got an extra $1377 in their gross paychecks, which reflects some of the profits made in the fourth quarter of last year and attempts to recognize “the company’s strong efforts in achieving its 2009 financial goals.” SNIFFING STARTS AT HONOLULU DAILY TRIBUNE, SCRIPPS TO DO REMOTE EDITING NEWSPRINT MAKER TRIMS LOSSES IN 2009 BRIEFS PERSONS