'The New York Times' in play

We're not selling The New York Times. We're not selling The New York Times. We're not selling The New York Times. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jnr, chairman and scion of the storied family that has owned the bastion of American journalism for 113 years, has gone blue in the face saying it. But not only does the commentariat continue to speculate about the paper's future, the line of acquisitive billionaires queuing round the block at the company's Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper headquarters in Manhattan seems to lengthen by the day.

Muscling his way towards the front of the queue this week – David Geffen. The music and movies mogul, who cofounded the Dreamworks film studio with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, was foiled in an attempt to buy the Los Angeles Times three years ago but has now turned his eye on an even bigger prize. Earlier this month, he made an offer for the 20 per cent stake in The New York Times held by Harbinger, the hedge fund run by Philip Falcone, which invested disastrously in the company last year.

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Mr Falcone has turned him down for now, saying he wants someone to pay above the market price, which is all Mr Geffen was offering. But with the value of the stake bumping along at levels not seen since the early Eighties, and with Harbinger apparently sounding out as many people as possible as buyers and finding little joy, even from deep-pocketed Google, it seems Mr Geffen may well get a second chance.

Meanwhile, Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms mogul who is the world's second-richest man, helped The New York Times stave off bankruptcy earlier this year by extending a high-interest loan and could emerge with 19 per cent of the company.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, has long been rumoured to want to add the Times to the financial news empire that made – and bears – his name. Rupert Murdoch, too, who snatched ownership of The Wall Street Journal from another storied newspaper family, the Bancrofts, two years ago, also covets the Times.

"Newspapers are not playthings exactly," says Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at The Poynter Institute, a Florida school for journalists. "But they are kind of like a sports franchise. Owning one gives you a lot of standing in your community – and in this case, it would be a national community. The New York Times has the strongest reader base of any paper of size in the country."

But remember Mr Sulzberger's mantra. We are not selling The New York Times. He is the fourth generation of the Ochs Sulzberger family to be publisher of the paper, and certainly doesn't want to be the last. His 28-year-old son is already climbing his way through the ranks with an eye on the top job. And the family seems locked in place. While Messrs Slim and Geffen may duke it out for a large stake in the non-voting shares of the company, the Ochs Sulzbergers control a majority of the voting shares and therefore of the composition of the board. As an added layer of protection, if individual family members sell out, their shares are converted into non-voting shares.

So only two things will dislodge the family: bankruptcy, which would transfer the company to its creditors, or an all-at-once decision by the family to give up its legacy.

Let's take bankruptcy first. For all the might of The New York Times, the No 3 best-selling paper in the land and a beacon of serious, liberal journalism, and of its website, nytimes.com, the best-read of any newspaper site in the world, with 20 million readers a month, bankruptcy loomed as a very real possibility at the start of this year.

However, the $250m loan from Mr Slim in January and a $225m sale and leaseback deal on its towering headquarters have tackled the immediate crisis. The company has met its immediate obligations and also bought back a chunk of debt due next year, which gives it more breathing room. Some of the other assets held in the parent company, such as the Boston Red Sox baseball team, are up for sale to raise further cash. The journalists' union at its second-largest paper, The Boston Globe, agreed to concessions on job security and on salaries that could help cut losses and eventually make it easier to sell the title.

The New York Times Company's $1bn debt burden remains high, however, and the company could still be unglued by a prolonged recession and the continued erosion of the old newspaper industry business model, as readers and advertisers drift away to the fragmented news offerings on the internet.

Newspaper executives and journalists across the industry are looking to the Times to see how it wrestles with these seismic issues. Although loathe to cut into the quality journalism that is its hallmark, the Times has cut newsroom jobs. It has also set up two internal "task forces" to examine how it might reconfigure the news operation to reflect the internet landscape and how to make new revenue from the website and other digital platforms, such as the Kindle e-reader.

Catherine Mathis, the company's spokeswoman, said it was also weighing charging for some of the internet site. "We want to determine if there are other opportunities for us to create additional online revenue streams," she said. "Our goal is to add substantial new revenue from our users without materially affecting the growth of our industry-leading online display advertising business."

There is an increasing urgency to the effort. Last month, the company reported a 27 per cent collapse in advertising revenue for the first three months of the year and the rate of decline has not slowed in the second quarter so far. Internet ad revenue, which was anyway proving disappointingly low compared to the income from newspaper ads, has gone into reverse since the recession began. Overall, the parent company plunged into the red in the first quarter.

Mr Slim, who is being paid a 14 per cent dividend on his loan to the company, appears best-placed to strike a deal. The Ochs Sulzbergers themselves, around 40 in the current generations of owners, have already agreed to forego dividends for the time being. If losses spiral to unsustainable levels, they may be facing a choice between big cuts in the budget for journalism or taking a cash infusion from a billionaire.

That is why the likes of Mr Slim and Mr Geffen are in the queue, because they see a point in the future where it is at least possible the family really might make that all-at-once decision to give up its legacy.

Mr Edmonds gives it long odds, but says: "Maybe they are persuaded that there is some joint venture or combination with Carlos Slim and his money that leaves them in control for some time."

Others are more certain that the Ochs Sulzbergers will see out this storm. John Morton, whose Morton Research Inc in Maryland has analysed the newspaper industry for decades, said: "As far as we know, the family remains cohesive, and the reason for that is that – unlike the Bancrofts – there are a number of members of the family who are active, working in the company. There is no question that the Sulzbergers will still control The New York Times one year from now, or in five years for that matter."