NYT columnist was paid 10% of NYT profit!!!

Posted by Marc Hodak on June 28, 2011 under Reporting on pay | Be the First to Comment

Gretchen Morgenson doesn’t have to disclose exactly how much she makes–she just gets to toss misleading, scurrilous barbs at those who must for her base pleasure–but it’s reasonable to assume that the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist earned, all by herself, about 10 percent of the total income from operations of the New York Times in 2008!  In fact, she earned more than the shareholders did that year!  In fact, she personally out-earned her company’s shareholders for two of the past five years!!  That’s 20% of the time!!!  What does all this mean!!!?

Nothing.

Not any more than the other useless comparisons she bandies around in her latest article on executive compensation, where she praises a study that compares executive pay to items like the GDP of third world countries, or random items off the income statement.  Alas, these comparisons don’t have to mean anything if their real purpose is nothing more than “to get people fired up,” which is the explicit aim of this exercise.  I have to admit, it did kind of get me riled up.