“The NYT Decides Quickly and Push It Aggressively.”

`The New York Times is being aggressive in doing business.`

That is the title that the Wall Street put for the article, which they analyzed the aggressive management style of the competing newspaper, the New York Times, on the 4th.

The New York Times has been changing aggressively both in editing and business since Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (51) took the Chair in 1997. The goal is to grow up as the newspaper selling not just in New York, but also nationally, as well as globally. And they want to bring the management up to their reputation. The Journal reported that while pursuing this goal, the Times decides quickly and pushes the decision aggressively. In the past, the Times had just meetings for 10 years for expanding 2 sections into 4 sections.

The Journal evaluated in the article with an interview with the president Arthur Sulzberger Jr., “He is regrouping the company aggressively with a well-organized management team and a relatively young board of directors.”

The aggressive management case had been revealed last October, when they almost intimidated the Washington Post, which co-published the International Herald Tribune, and forcibly bought out 50% of their share.

The Journal reported the procedures in detail that △the Times broke the contract with the Random House, which had exercised the publication rights of the contents of the Times for the last 15 years, and moved to a company that proposed better royalty, △they declared a separation from a on-line financial newspaper the Street Dot Com after learning about on-line journalism from them, and △they underwent a separate promotion of the newspaper, denying a joint sales system for selling the newspaper in colleges.

The Journal gave the Times credit that their stock price went up 50% for the last 5 years since 1997, they sold 8% more copies, and they had a net profit of as much as 107.5 million dollars in the 4th quarter of last year when other newspapers had trouble finding advertisers due to economical slump.

The Journal, however, did not forget to warn them by saying, “Because of the aggressive management of the Times, the competition with the mother company of the Journal, Dow Jones, and the Gannett, which publishes the national newspaper, the USA Today, is getting intensified,” and “in an industry where cooperation is important, collision with competitors shall pay the price.”

Eun-Taek Hong euntack@donga.com