NY Times not for sale: Publisher

NEW YORK - Reuters

After sale of The Boston Globe and The Washington Post eyes have turned to New York Times. AFP photo

The New York Times is not for sale, its controlling family and publisher have said, the newspaper reported after a week in which both The Boston Globe and The Washington Post were purchased by new owners.

“Will our family seek to sell The Times? The answer to that is no,” the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who is also chairman of the New York Times Co, said in a statement reported on the newspaper’s website.

Sulzberger Jr. said he and Vice Chairman Michael Golden had spoken to Donald Graham, chairman and chief executive of the Washington Post Co, about his decision to sell The Post and some smaller newspapers and stressed that the NY Times did not plan to follow a similar path.

Commitment to NYT

Sulzberger Jr. also said the trustees of the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust and the rest of the family were “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.”

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos agreed to buy the Washington Post for $250 million in a surprise deal that ends the Graham family’s 80 years of ownership. The New York Times is selling The Boston Globe to the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox baseball team for $70 million in cash, a small fraction of what the Times paid for the newspaper 20 years ago.