Finance Matters

Archive for January 8th, 2010

Daniel Cohen, a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, which owns a controlling vote on New York Times’ board, is walking away from the board in April.

According to New York Times Securities and Exchange documents filed today, he informed the board on Jan. 7 that he would be not be asking to be re-elected at the company’s annual meeting in April.

Here’s the full note:

On January 7, 2010, Daniel Cohen notified the Chairman of the Board of Directors of The New York Times Company (the “Company”) of his decision not to stand for re-election to the Board at the Company’s 2010 annual meeting. Mr. Cohen, a member of the Ochs/Sulzberger family, who in addition to serving as a director is a trustee of the family trust that holds a majority of the Company’s Class B Common Stock, will continue to serve until the 2010 annual meeting, which the Company expects will be held in April.

Cohen worked for the Times for 16 years with several senior positions, most recently as 1999 as senior vice president of advertising.

He was also the president of a production company that produced shows including “A Cook’s Tour” with Anthony Bourdain and “Boy Meets Grill” and “Throwdown” with Bobby Flay.

He currently serves as director of educational services for ReServe, Inc., Retired Professionals Serving the Nonprofit Community.

We sent messages to The New York Times and Cohen for comment.

Here’s his picture:

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See Also:

• New York Times Gives Local Blogging Duties To Journalism Students
• Goldman Blasts The New York Times’s Hit-Job
• The New York Times Fires More Journalists

Lawyers jokes aside, attorneys are evaluated for their “character and fitness” before they are admitted to the bar in their state.

They questions are what you would expect — have you been expelled from any institution for an honor violation, have you ever convicted for any crime, etc.

But the Association of American Law Schools is sponsoring a panel that will address whether applicants’  cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment should be evaluated as part of the character and fitness assessment. From the description of the panel:

Cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment have made their way to the legal academy.…Do law students who engage in harassment, smearing, and other such conduct (on Facebook, blogs, “Above the Law,” etc.) raise fitness and professionalism issues?  Is there a problem with law students using websites to make outrageous gender- or race-specific comments (often about other students or faculty members)?  (See http://lawvibe.com/the-autoadmit-scandal-xoxoth/ .)  Is this conduct beyond question as free speech or does this conduct raise character and fitness issues that law schools must address? 

Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy outlined the specific free speech issues and the chance that an ill-defined policy would chill debate among law students fearful of getting too close to the line.

Brian Leiter suggested that, “a simple rule like, ‘No one shall be admitted to the Bar who repeatedly and with malicious intent posts on the Internet threats (implied or otherwise) of sexual violence against women’ would not unduly impinge the marketplace of ideas.”

No one (well, except, we assume those who post seriously harassing items on a site) finds true harassment or stalking — on or off the Internet — particularly appealing behavior, and, while I’m at it, I would rather not have a total chauvinist as my attorney, but outside the clear line threatening illegal behavior like Leiter suggests, this would be a fairly difficult thing to approproiately institute.

Like most free speech trade-offs, it would be better to admit a few undesirables (who will hopefully weed themselves out in one way or another) than risk stifling legitimate debate.

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See Also:

• Dixie Chick Natalie Maines Prevails In Free Speech Battle
• Levinson Axelrod "Sucks" Blogger Is Just A Free Speech Advocate
• Free Speech Under Fire: Are Dogfighting Videos Really So Heinous We Should Gut The First Amendment?

We just heard a story from an old Deutsche Bank trader who told us that on the trading floor once, there was a bet going that the office’s most chubby guy couldn’t do 100 push ups in a row.

He had a couple months to get in shape. Apparently traders bet tens of thousands of dollars and even clients were in on it.

They set the big event for the end of the year, when everyone would watch as he attempted the hundred.

In the months leading up the show-down, some of the guys who bet against him regularly ordered the guy Chinese food and put doughnuts in front of him to tempt him. Anything to up their odds.

The guy fought back. He hired a personal trainer and concentrated only on his pecs but, sadly, his hard work was for nought. Nothing ever happened.

The push-up extravaganza was cancelled. Turns out the upper management found out, and actually threatened to fire him over the bet.

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See Also:

• How Deutsche Bank Bet On Americans Dying Early And Lost
• After The Deutsche Bank Holiday Party Things Got Seriously Messy
• Wall Street’s Hot New Betting Game: What’s The Over/Under On The Number Of Tiger Women To Come Out?

Yesterday we posted a video of a Japanese whaling ship ramming into anti-whaling protester boat the Ady Gil and slicing it in two.

Apparently, the craft that rescued the six activists on board the Ady Gil was the Bob Barker, a fellow anti-whaling vessel purchased with a $5 million donation from the former host of The Price Is Right, the LA Times reports.

Barker, “one of the entertainment industry’s top animal-cause philanthropists,” got involved in the anti-whaling cause after the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation society, Paul Watson, told him $5 million could pay for a boat that would help “put Japanese whalers out of business.”

Barker made the commitment for his namesake ship on the spot.

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See Also:

• Amazing Footage Of Japanese Whaling Ship Slicing Anti-Whaling Protester Boat In Two

Conan O’Brien may not be left out in the cold if NBC kicks him out of his Late Night slot. Fox is warming up a spot for him on their network.

According to The New York Times, Conan’s reps made it clear that he wouldn’t accept NBC’s plan to give Jay Leno his 11:35 p.m. slot and kick Conan back to midnight.

Fox executives have been looking for a late night host. “We love Conan,” one Fox executive told the Times.

Of course they do! Wanda Sykes is their late night personality, and her show airs on Saturday.

But it’d be a bit tricky for Fox to make it happen.

NBC or O’Brien would have to break their contract. He is rumored to have a deal to host “The Tonight Show” or NBC would owe him a $45 million penalty fee. If he can keep “The Tonight Show,” NBC may not be messing with the terms of his contract and trap him at the network.

Anyway, according to the LA Times, all this wooing from Fox might just be about needling NBC chiefs Jeff Zucker and Jeff Gaspin more than a push for a late night show in earnest. Fox will have many hurdles to jump over before they could even get one.

Joe Flint, LA Times: Fox couldn’t just jump into the late-night game. It would have to ask, and in some cases beg, its affiliates for the time to carry a late show. The stations won’t hand over that time just out of the goodness of their hearts. Furthermore, Fox is already asking (or is it demanding?) that its affiliates give it a cut of any money they get from cable operators for carrying their signals. The logic is that because Fox provides the affiliates with programming, it should get a cut of any money distributors pay them to carry the signal.

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See Also:

• Leno Might Get Half-Hour Show, With Conan And Fallon To Follow
• Whoa! NBC May Dump Conan For Leno
• Jay Leno Addresses Cancellation Rumors: ‘Nobody Has Said Anything to Me’