As the senior management team met in late September 2001 to discuss the future
organizational structure for NYTD, several areas of friction were at top-of-mind.
Each was created by overlap between the operations of the core business and NYTD.
Editorial Operations and the New York Times Brand
Editorial operations at NYTD and their potential impact on the New York Times
brand continued to be an area of concern. Over several decades, the newspaper
industry had adopted the separation of editorial operations and business operations as
a sacred principle. The principle developed because in the industry’s early years, many
unscrupulous owners would do anything necessary to sell their product. Over time,
readers lost trust. NYTD executive vice president Lincoln Millstein described how the
industry survived: