NYT adds online biz news

Look for a bunch of new Web pages on specialized subjects - the economy, energy, small business, personal finance and enterprise technology. The format is expected to resemble DealBook, which includes original reporting and news aggregated from elsewhere. And yes, it’s being interpreted as an effort to hold off the WSJ, which plans to revamp its own Web site in a few months. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told Ad Age that no other newspaper - including the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ - can "steal our readers."

Mr. Sulzberger, 56, has been publisher since 1992 and chairman of the family business since 1997 but still gets called "Young Arthur" sometimes. It's partly that enthusiasm and tone that strike some people as insufficiently Timesian. But something interesting is happening. The light on him started changing after the Chandlers cashed out of Tribune's troubles and the Bancrofts sold Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Sulzberger, by comparison, blocked a push from Morgan Stanley Investment Management to end his family's control. The family yanked major money from Morgan Stanley in apparent retaliation. He doesn't seem different; the environment definitely does. "The fecklessness of the Bancrofts reflected that Arthur had sharp values," a Times reporter said. "He may not be a business visionary, but he is stalwart in a way that they were not."

The NYT's online expansion hardly reflects the overall trend in business coverage. More than a third of newspapers are giving less space to business than they were three years ago, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study also found that 30 percent of papers are giving business news fewer reporting resources. Only foreign news and national news have been cut more. "Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper," notes the study. The elimination of stock tables has led to the shrinkage.