Sheelah Kolhatkar introduces us to the Harberts, the southern gothic family whose money funded Harbinger Capital Partners, the hedge fund that bought a large stake in the New York Times late last year, in the October issue of Portfolio. She also got a little face time with our man, Stern Business School professor, activist investor, and vagilante Scott Galloway, whom Harbinger nominated to sit on the Times board.
“Let me be clear: I think the newspaper business is a shitty business,” Galloway tells me, in his spartan little office at Harbert Management during an interview that took place before he became actively involved with the company. “The Sacramento Bee, the Chicago Tribune—I think a lot of those newspapers are fucked.” Not the Times, however: “The New York Times is like Yahoo with content,” Galloway says.
Well, the people at Yahoo are going to be pissed about that.
Taking on the Times [Portfolio]
