The Vagilante's invasion of the New York Times is complete! According to today's paper, the two hedge funds that had amassed 19 percent of The Times Company's publicly traded stock have been granted two board chairs. It marks the first time since the company went public in 1967 that the Times has accepted board directors nominated by a non-Sulzberger.
One of the nominees, NYU marketing prof Scott Galloway, founded the hedge fund Firebrand, but is perhaps more famous for being unable to stop acting like he's still a ZBT frat boy. (The other is the presumably more mild-mannered James Kohlberg, of Kolhberg & Associates.) Galloway and his partners suggested that the Times should sell, among other things, the Boston Globe, its Manhattan headquarters, some smaller papers, and its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox, and instead invest money into Internet companies, but they did acknowledge that "once they are privy to inside information, they may have a different view of the company strategy." Now, we aren't business savvy like Señor Snatchbuckler, but we too think that actually looking at the numbers is better than staking millions of dollars and countless jobs on pure conjecture.