Why can’t the Ford Foundation buy the New York Times?

Asks former Reagan Treasury department official Bruce Bartlett in a column in Forbes.

Well, the Times Company’s market capitalization may now be down to $585 million, but according to well-informed sources, the Ford Foundation’s endowment lost 38% in 2008, making any risky new investments rather less likely. The Times could always apply for a grant from Ford, but with a newsroom budget of around $200 million, that wouldn’t go very far.

Similarly, the Boston Globe has become a gigantic albatross for the Times Company, and Harvard University’s endowment lost 22% between June and December 2008, making it unclear why Harvard would want to drop a lot of money on a depreciating asset when it’s already preparing for layoffs.

The Washington Times has repositioned itself as a mainstream newspaper rather than a conservative one, poaching former Washington Post writer John Solomon to succeed editor-in-chief Wes Pruden in 2008. So it’s unlikely that the Heritage Foundation would want to buy it, especially in view of the fact that the paper has lost money every year since its founding in 1982 — over $1 billion in total, wrote Ben McGrath in a 2003 short in the New Yorker. I’m not familiar with Heritage’s finances, but I’m reasonably sure an organization that claims “an annual expense budget of $61 million” is not going to want to buy one with annual losses of $45 million.