New York Times Company reports $74m loss

Read Gordon's Republic blog post - NY Times quiet on charging for content

The news caused the company's Wall Street share price to plummet nearly 16% yesterday -- its biggest trading drop in 22 years, since the Black Monday crash of 1987.

The paper blamed slumping ad revenues, which fell 27% over the first quarter, and added that it did not expect that rate to slow until at least the second half of 2009. Revenues across the group fell 18.6% to $609m.

Janet Robinson, the company's chief executive, said that it is exploring alternative online models for its papers, such as subscription models. Online revenue at the group accounted for nearly 13% of its total revenue and fell 5.6% to $78.2m in the first quarter.

The company blamed its poor performance on its New England Media Group, which houses the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette, saying it contributed to "significant losses".

The New York Times is also trying to sell its 17.5% stake in baseball team Boston Red Sox and its Fenway Park ground.

Last week, the New York Times company said it would cut several weekly papers and cut freelance spending in an effort to save millions of dollars, including cutting 5% of non-unionised staff at its flagship paper.

The US newspaper industry is in such a bad state that Democrat and former presidential candidate John Kerry called a series of Senate hearings to look into how the sector can be aided. His actions were spurred by the New York Times' demands last month that unions cut costs at the Globe paper by $20m or face closure within 20 days. That deadline expires next week (on May 1).

Yesterday, the New York Times rejected a demand from the Globe's biggest union to hold public talks.