Back in March I wrote a long piece for the Washington Examiner magazine about the turmoil at the New York Times. I wrote:
If my judgment as a longtime reader is that the paper has gone off a cliff, the collective wisdom expressed by the stock market is offering the opposite opinion. The New York Times Company stock price has climbed from a low of less than $5 a share following the 2008 financial crisis to a recent high of as much as $58 a share, valuing the company at more than $8 billion, a frothy 84 times earnings. Back in 2011, when the overall stock market was at a multiple of about 21 times earnings, Times columnist David Leonhardt described the prices as "historically expensive." There's substantial short interest in Times Company stock, and the company's upward share price movements sometimes resemble those of GameStop, AMC, or other legacy stocks benefiting from short squeezes.
The share price is back down in the $42 or $43 range, still rich but off 25% or so from that $58 a share recent high.