I'm sure they'll have an excuse for this, but whatever it is, it won't fly with yours truly.
Saturday, the New York Times published a feature called "The Pay at the Top." Instead of preparing the usual "Who made the most?" list, it instead disclosed the "pay for 200 chief executives at 199 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion."
But at a link called "Calculating the Pay Figures," the Times told us that, "The data includes information for 200 executives at 199 companies with annual revenue of at least $5.78 billion" for U.S-based companies that "filed a preliminary or definitive proxy statement by March 26."
Why the difference? Besides a bit of the sloppiness that is all too characteristic at the paper these days, I believe the difference may inadvertently reveal why the Times chose to prepare its report as it did.
I submit that there is a high likelihood that the Times chose the "200 companies with the highest revenues" method to avoid having to reveal Times CEO Pinch Sulzberger's embarrassingly overgenerous total compensation package last year to its readers (from Page 51 of the company's March 12 proxy statement):
The $12.25 million in combined total compensation paid to Sulzberger and Janet Robinson is over 60% of the company's reported after-tax profit of $19.9 million in 2009.
Of the 200 high-revenue companies listed, Sulzberger's total comp of just just under $6 million was higher than 62 of the CEOs listed in the Times's high-revenue 200, while Its 2009 revenues of $2.44 billion would have placed it 784th on last year's Fortune 1000 list. It's possible, though not likely, that a straight highest-paid 200 list might have included Sulzberger. It clearly would have been way, way above #784.
Most of the 60 or so CEOs earning less on the Times's list clearly have responsibilities that dwarf those of Mr. Pinch and Ms. Robinson, including but not limited to the heads of these well-known companies (CEO total comp in parens): United Parcel Service ($5.5 mil), General Electric ($5.5 mil), Motorola ($3.8 million), Costco ($2.7 mil), Microsoft ($1.3 mil), JP Morgan Chase ($1.3 mil), Whole Foods ($700,000), and Tyson Foods ($500,000).
I also daresay that the vast majority of those in the 200 highest-revenue list haven't seen their companies' revenues shrink by 25% in the past three years, as has been the case at the Times, and that very few have cut the pay of most of their employees by 5%-10% in the past year, as the Time infamously did last year.
If any CEO besides Sulzberger were doing this, the Times would be portraying him or her as a greedy capitalist pig, as would much of the rest of the press, which has been largely silent about the Sulzberger-Robinson cash drain.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
