The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) reported that its October revenue got beat up again. If anything, it was worse than some previous months this year, but it's papers are caught in the vortex of a failing industry. For the month, advertising revenue was down 16.2%. Internet revenue only rose in the single digits, so online sales are not going to save the company.

In an odd way, the drop in revenue was the relative good news because the company also cut its dividend by a very large amount. The payout was cut by 74% to $0.06 per share. To make matters worse, the stock sold off 10% to a 52-week low of $5.72.

NYT has debt that is due next year. Its papers in New England, led by the Boston Globe, are losing as much as 20% of their ad revenue each month.

The company is controlled by the Sulzberger family, which has been in charge for over a century. One of the reasons the brothers and sisters, aunt and cousins have supported management was for the rich payout they received each quarter. Now, that is going away.

With an unhappy family, the company may be in play. Perhaps Rupert Murdock might buy it. NYT would make a nice bookend for The Wall Street Journal.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

When News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO and media baron Rupert Murdoch speaks, people in the media business should listen. The 77 year-old tycoon has built an impressive array of media properties and is one of the few who gets it when it comes to how media should be created, by whom it should be created, and how it's consumed by different consumer segments.

Recently, Murdoch indicated that the deeply troubled newspaper industry can survive only if editors and writers throw their egos out the window and regain the trust and loyalty of their readers. The once monopolistic newspaper industry now competes with the 24/7 internet news trade and its army of well-informed bloggers and citizen journalists. If the old guard doesn't believe this is the new competition, then I hope they have a second career all lined up.

Murdoch's words appear uncannily prescient: "My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers." He goes on to say that the "paper on the porch" might go away, but daily news will not.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), whose competitors include CBS (NYSE: CBS), Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, Sony (NYSE: SNE), and Viacom (NYSE: VIA), reported earnings for the fiscal first quarter on Wednesday after the market closed. The stock was down over 11% in the after-hours trading session.

What happened? Do you really need to ask? Hard times beget hard guidance, my friends. CEO Rupert Murdoch is trying to be honest with his shareholders. News Corp. is bracing for a slowdown in advertising and DVD sales. And as for the bottom line, the media conglomerate didn't beat estimates with its Q1 net income of $0.20 per share. Wall Street was looking for three more pennies.

Revenue increased 6%, at least. However, according to the press release, one of my favorite metrics dipped severely during Q1. Granted, this is only the first quarter, but net cash from operations took a hideous plunge of 70%. I'm sure Murdoch didn't like seeing that. One thing I hope he takes very seriously is the need to cut costs. He stated that this will be a priority.

Okay, here is an absolutely brilliant idea. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. According to this blurb at The Hollywood Reporter, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) is interested in doing a sequel to the classic 1987 film Wall Street.

Some of you younger investors out there might not be familiar with the movie, but perhaps you're familiar with the now-famous quote "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." It was uttered by the loathsome Gordon Gekko, whose alliterative name almost oozes corporate scandal and villainy. That character was played by Michael Douglas. Wall Street was directed by Oliver Stone and it portrayed the evil side of capitalism, replete with insider trading and share-price manipulation. It's considered a classic, iconic fictional snapshot of the current zeitgeist at the time: the only thing that mattered was upward mobility and accumulation of as much net worth as conceivable without consideration for the little guy. It came out around the time of the '87 market crash, so it had that going for it.

This is why News Corp. needs to fast-track the project. According to this source from May of last year, a sequel to Wall Street was already in the works. Obviously, the fact that The Hollywood Reporter mentioned the project this week means that execs at Fox feel that the timing for a sequel is approaching an optimal point. In fact, they really should try to get it out into the marketplace as quickly as they can, and hopefully with Michael Douglas reprising his role as Gekko (Douglas' return is not set in stone at this point). Not only could the movie gross a decent amount at the box office, but think of the synergy potential here.

News Corp. is fighting a battle with General Electric's (NYSE: GE) CNBC as we speak. The Fox Business Channel wants to take away as many viewers as possible from the stock-market network. Problem is, CNBC is a very powerful brand in its arena. Of course, that doesn't deter the pit bulls at Fox. If you had to describe the media company with only one word, that word would, by necessity, be a hyphenate: ultra-competitive. In fact, Fox Business Channel recently slammed BloggingStocks' own Jim Cramer in a recent promo (see a piece on this subject by Zac Bissonnette).

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is about to enter the "No Spin Zone."

The Illinois senator is due to be interviewed by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, host of the "The O'Reilly Factor," on Thursday, the final night of The Republican National Convention, according to TVNewser.com. I am sure executives at Fox parent company News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) were high-fiving each other when that interview was secured. The clash between the suave Obama and the bellicose O'Reilly will make for interesting television. It will be like a car accident on the highway that people can't help themselves from gawking at.

Maybe Obama views it as a chance to show his supporters that he is not afraid of O'Reilly, who is a pussy cat compared with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It's also quite a contrast to the strategy of Republican John McCain, who is keeping the media at an arm's length. His campaign even canceled an interview the candidate had scheduled with CNN's Larry King because it did not like the tough questions anchor Campbell Brown asked its spokesman about the qualifiicaitons of his running-mate Sarah Palin.

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions have been a dream come true for the cable news channels. More people tuned into CNN, which is owned by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), for Obama's acceptance than for Fox, MSNBC and the broadcast networks. The address got more viewers than the American Idol final, the Oscars, or the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Fox, though, continues to attract more viewers overall, especially during the Republican get-together in St. Paul. General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) MSNBC is gaining viewers too, though some may be curious to see if its feuding on-air personalities will break into a fist fight. All three of the cable news networks are raking in major bucks from those annoying 30-second TV spots that are an unfortunate part of American political life.

A winner has already emerged from the Obama-O'Reilly confrontation before a single punch has been thrown: News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch. The media baron lusts for the power to set the nation's political agenda. Come Thursday night, that's exactly what he will be able to do.

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp (NYSE: NWS) and king of all he surveys, wants to buy The New York Times. At least that is what he told Vanity Fair according to a Reuters report.

It is hard to see why Murdoch would even bother to dream that dream. Based on the most recent quarterly earnings report and monthly figures reported by The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT), the paper probably loses money when the results of its online business are backed out. If ad lineage at the print product keeps falling, and it will, even NYTimes.com will not be able to save the bottom line.

While The New York Times is a trophy, it would almost certainly be an expensive one. The parent company has a market cap of about $2 billion, and the paper might go for more than that because of its unique position as the most respected news outlet in the US.

Murdoch is probably already struggling with The Wall Street Journal. He has to be. Newspaper ad revenue is simply dropping too fast for the Journal to be immune.

Owning another paper is just asking for more losses which would need to be offset by other businesses at News Corp.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Russian business runs on different rules. News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Rupert Murdoch, who has been doing business in China for years, is nervous about his Russian enterprises. This morning, the FBI announced it had rounded up a ring of data thieves, many from former Soviet Union countries. And then there's the little matter of BP-TNK, a joint venture between BP (NYSE: BP) and a Russian company, whose Russian shareholders are booting out its Western executives so they can take over the operation.

Here's what Silicon Alley insider reports Murdoch had to say about doing business in Russia: "We have great growing business there but just -- this is purely me, I'm sorry, I'm -- the more I read about investments in Russia, the less I like the feel of it. The more successful we'd be, the more vulnerable we'd be to have it stolen from us, so there we sell now."

In case you missed it, The Detroit Free Press reports that an international ring of data thieves used wardriving -- the practice of stealing data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks -- to take 40 million identities, use the information to print fake ATM cards, and steal millions of dollars. The corporate victims include customers of TJX (NYSE: TJX), Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), and OfficeMax (NYSE: OMX). Five of the 11 defendants are from former Soviet Union countries -- "one is from Estonia, three are from Ukraine, and one is from Belarus."

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), a competitor of media entities such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) CBS (NYSE: CBS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, reported its Q4 and full-year numbers on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the stock received an after-hours yawn from investors. The share price didn't move much at all, about a nickel (the stock was up almost 5% on the day, however). The stats seemed pretty good in an overall sense, but they weren't overly compelling either, and I'm not sure I'd want to enter a position in News Corp. at the moment due to questions about the softening advertising market for television stations. But let's look at the data.

For the quarter, revenues increased over 16% and earnings per diluted share jumped over 50% to $0.43. There were, however, some asset gains thrown into that number. News Corp. likes to focus on operating income, and that metric grew 21% in Q4. Every operating segment, except for television, saw an increase in its profits. For the full year, revenues increased 15% and earnings per diluted share soared almost 68% to $1.81. Again, operating income gives a better account of performance due to the asset transactions affecting the bottom line, and here we see the growth is closer to 21%. For the full year, every operating segment saw growth.

News Corp.'s studio and cable divisions are doing well, and like I said, in a general sense, this was a good report. Plus, Fox Interactive Media saw its top line expand by well over 50%, driven by MySpace. But Rupert Murdoch has expressed some caution in terms of growth going forward. According to this article, he sees growth ahead, but it won't be of the stellar variety. And I'll add that operational cash flow for the year was down over 4%. I'd rather see that metric rise on a twelve-month basis. News Corp.'s shares seem cheap to me, but I don't feel compelled at this point to start a position. Given the current economic climate, I'd rather sit on the sidelines and wait for some more data.

Disclosure: I own Disney and GE; positions can change at any time.

The New York Times reports -- with relief (since the Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin's name had been floated for the job) -- that News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) Wall Street Journal has appointed Robert Thomson, a Murdoch loyalist who formerly edited the Times of London as its managing editor. Murdoch also appointed another loyalist, Leslie Hinton, as its publisher. Thomson and Hinton will also be editor-in-chief and CEO, respectively, of Dow Jones.

I remember back when Murdoch was courting the Bancroft family and people were worried that he would replace the senior people at the Wall Street Journal with his own people. Back then, I posted that he had a track record of doing that when he took over newspapers. I did not expect a different outcome with the Journal.

I was just thinking today that since I skip over most of what the Wall Street Journal publishes in its print edition, it would not be too much of a hardship to cancel my subscription when it comes up for renewal. If Thomson's appointment means less business insight and more propaganda, that decision will be an easier one.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Shareholders of Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) must be scratching their heads over the company's $650 million purchase of Newsday from Tribune Co., the latest in a long series of baffling moves by the Dolan family, which controls the New York-based cable company.

The theory -- if you want to call it that -- is that Cablevision would be able to market the newspaper to its customers and that the company would be able to add additional content to its cable news channel. This makes no sense. People have stopped reading newspapers in droves. The only way that they would even consider subscribing is if Cablevision practically gave the newspaper away. Newsday could have struck an alliance with the cable channel to share content without the paper changing hands; these sort of deals happen all of the time.

Maybe advertisers will be more interested in Newsday now that Cablevision will be able to bundle ad space in the paper and its website along with cable commercial time. The problem, though, is that residents in Long Island have a plethora of media choices including the New York Times, New York Daily News and The New York Post. Like the readers, the only way that advertisers that aren't in the newspaper now would consider doing business with Newsday would be with steep discounts.

The special committee set up by Rupert Murdoch to ensure the editorial independence of the Wall Street Journal is about as useful as a referee at a professional wrestling bout. The sad thing is that News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) is paying members of this committee $100,000 a year to let Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch do whatever he wants to do anyway.

A case in point is the abrupt resignation of Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli. The lackeys -- oh, I mean the special committee set up following the Dow Jones acquisition -- felt compelled Monday to issue a press release to show publicly that they were on the case. At least, that's what it tried to do.

"Although our charter does not directly envision a process for dealing with a resignation, Committee members expressed the view that learning of the Brauchli matter after the fact failed to meet the letter and the spirit of the agreement," the committee said in a statement. The committee met with Brauchli alone and was told that "his action was not the result of any problem with editorial interference or attempts to impose an ideological viewpoint. He insisted that News Corp. has been `scrupulous' about the integrity of the paper."

Yeah, right.

Murdoch has meddled in his media properties for decades. No special committee is going to stop his lust for power. Anyone who expected otherwise is either naive or deluded. Murdoch will have no inhibitions of messing with Newsday if he succeeds in buying Newsday from Sam Zell's Tribune Co. because beggars can't be choosers.

Rupert Murdoch is facing off against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as he seeks to take control of two TV stations and three newspapers in New York -- including Newsday -- The New York Times reports. A December 2007 FCC rule allows a company to own just one paper and one television station in the same city in the top 20 markets so long as there are at least eight other independent sources of news and the station is not in the top four. (The stations that News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) controls are the fourth- and sixth-largest in the New York market).

Meanwhile, I am fascinated by the Wall Street Journal's [subscription required] coverage of the departure of its own managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, yesterday. The punch line was that everything is fine because Brauchli was simply doing what the boss wanted. Brauchli's new role? Providing "guidance to senior management in a wide range of areas," including whether Murdoch's Star-TV service in Asia should launch a business-news channel. Sounds like a good fit.

In contrast to the Journal's corporate press release on its page one, The New York Times reported that Brauchli was fired. It noted that a few weeks prior to his departure, Murdoch's henchmen indicated they were unhappy with the pace of change at the Journal. The Times wrote: "At some point, They told him, 'We don't think this is working,' and Brauchli replied that in that case, he should consider leaving."

It appears that News Corp (NYSE: NWS) will buy the largest newspaper on Long Island, Newsday, from The Tribune Co., increasing pressure on The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) in its home market. News Corp already owns The New York Post. Recent press reports indicate that News Corp is adding more political and international content to The Wall Street Journal to better compete with the Times.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the price for Newsday could be about $580 million, and final details of the purchase or lack of government approval could still kill the deal.

Tribune needs to make the sale to cover debt it took on in its LBO.

The news is especially bad for The New York Times Co. While the Post does not take much advertising from the Times, it does have a circulation of over 600,000 in New York City. Newsday has a daily circulation of about 400,000 in the well-to-do area of Long Island, just east of New York.

The New York Times is already in enough trouble. It posted a loss last quarter, and in March advertising revenue fell about 11%. The firm's stock trades at $20, but many observers believe that it it were not the target of investors who hope to break it up or sell it that the shares price would be much lower.

The value of the company just got undermined again.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• If the financial crisis hasn't crippled banks enough, the cost to build bank loan reserves may be just as painful, according to the Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street". The need for larger reserves is eating away at earnings and is showing up in first quarter reports for banks such as Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC), whose results took an additional hit because of a $6B addition to its loan loss reserve.
• Just four months after Journal parent Dow Jones & Co. was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (NYSE: NWS), Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli is expected to resign, according to the Wall Street Journal. Journal publisher Robert Thomson may temporarily take over until a new managing editor is hired.
• The Financial Times reported that Citigroup Incorporated (NYSE: C) is seeking advice from IT group Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) on how to overcome a crisis without breaking up the company.

WEB SITES:

• According to Reuters, activist shareholders in ASM International (NASDAQ: ASMI) believe, by giving more equity to top managers, that they can boost its value by $1.6B.

To the surprise of no one, the newly private Tribune Co. is probably going to sell Newsday. The once-venerable New York paper, like all metro dailies, has fallen on hard times and Tribune's new CEO and owner Sam Zell has got a mountain of debt to pay down.

According to The Wall Street Journal . Long Island-based Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) and New York's Daily News as potential buyers. Rupert Murdoch probably would love to buy Newsday and combine it with News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) New York Post, but I am not sure whether the antitrust regulators would allow it. He is trying to merge everything but the editorial staffs of the Post -- never a hugely profitable enterprise -- with Newsday to save money in a joint operating agreement, the Journal says.

After spending $5 billion for Dow Jones, Murdoch needs to pick all of the low-hanging fruit he can. I expect this deal to happen. Maybe it will lead to others for papers that buyers are eager to unload. Perhaps, Murdoch might buy other Tribune papers from Zell such as The Baltimore Sun or Los Angeles Times. As the Australian tycoon showed in chasing Dow Jones, influence matters as much to him as profits. Gaining more big papers furthers that goal at the expense of shareholders.