Dan Gainor Appears on Fox Biz to Discuss Bad Biz at NYT

Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Network January 31 to discuss reasons why The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) revenue numbers decreased recently - saying that its product is the problem.

"People have lost confidence in the media according to most studies...Most Americans understand that the...mainstream media are overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelming out of touch with a lot of their issues," Gainor said.

Gainor cited an instance where the Times was ran a story about veterans being more violent when they come back to the United States - turning "anecdotes into a loosely connected story and when you do that you alienate readers. They're the people that the Times work for. Journalists forget that."

Clay Waters of the Media Research Center's TimesWatch pointed out that the story, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles" overlaid the troubles of Vietnam veterans on soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Waters also claimed January 14 that the Times also put too much emphasis on study to make an ideological point about the horrors of war.

The press release, January 31, explained the decrease in revenue:

The New York Times Company announced today that in December total Company revenues from continuing operations decreased 22.4% compared with December 2006, when our fiscal calendar included an additional week; excluding the estimated impact of the additional week in 2006, they decreased 8.2%. Advertising revenues decreased 25.2%; excluding the additional week, they decreased 12.0%. Circulation revenues decreased 17.8%; excluding the additional week, they increased 0.6%.

In addition to its own paper, The New York Times Company includes other news sources like the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe.