Is The New York Times in trouble?

Some signs clearly point in that direction. The newspaper mortgaged its new tower on Times Square, and accepted an investment of $250 million from a Mexican investor. Ad revenue is down - as it is everywhere - and the paper's experiment with generating online revenue from their TimesSelect subscription program was abandoned a few months ago.

Elsewhere, the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times are bankrupt - not through their own failings, but because they were bought by an investor who threw the cost of purchasing their parent company on its books, causing it to fail. An act of supreme vandalism of the public interest? Of course.

The irony lies in the fact that more people than ever before read the Times. No newspaper has managed to develop a successful revenue model based on their online properties, but if they ever do, they will be very rich companies - not, mind you, that the business is unprofitable to begin with. It's just not profitable enough for the money vultures.

So, what to do? Given how we're throwing money at banks brought low by their own greed, shouldn't we consider some kind of rescue, maybe comparable to the Swedish model? The New York Times is a national jewel, however irksome their editorial board may sometimes be. Without it, our national discourse would be immeasurably poorer.