The Mexican mogul is reported to be talking about a substantial investment in the newspaper’s struggling parent, in go for special preferred shares

By Jon Fine

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So much conducive to the vernacular New Yorker fantasy that The New York Times‘ white gallant might have existence billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Carlos Slim, owner of Mexican communications company Telmex (TMX) and one of the world’s richest men, is in talks with he New York Times Co. (NYT) to take a substantial investment in the company. One scenario under controversy, according to the Journal, would have existence for Slim to inject hundreds of millions into the cash-strapped party in exchange in spite of preferred shares, which would pay Mr. Slim a special dividend.

In September of last year, Slim disclosed he had taken a 6.4% bet in the Times Co.’s common stock. At that delivery, a Slim speaker told the Financial Times that Slim’s concern came about solely because "it’s a great company, the price is cheap, and it gives a good dividend." But in November, the Times Co. cut its dividend from 23¢ per share to 6¢ per share.

A New York Times spokeswoman declined to comment on any state of the Journal’s story, and representatives of Mr. Slim’session Telmex did not immediately respond to an inquiry.

The Times Co. is still controlled by descendents of the Sulzberger and Ochs families, who own a special class of stock, and the Journal aforesaid that Mr. Slim’s preferred shares would lack the "super voting" status of the families’.

Unlike with the Bancroft family, which formerly controlled The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, but sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (NWS) in 2007 for $5 billion, there has been nay general sign of kindred dissension within Times ownership. (Bancroft family members Billy Cox and Elisabeth Goth went public with their concerns past Dow Jones management in the late 1990s, albeit to no avail.)

Still, the fact that the Times Co. owns what is likely the nature’s most renowned journalistic franchise has not insulated it from the destruction being visited upon the U.S. newspaper industry. Company ad revenues continue to shrink—in November, they fell 20.9%. Late last year, the company had $46 million in cash and a $400 million debt payment due in May 2009; the corporation also had an untapped loan facility and had signaled that it was discussing that debt situation with its lenders.

The company is also mulling selling its 17.5% stake of the parent company of the Boston Red Sox baseball club, and last year signaled it would plan to borrow up to $225 million against its landmark Manhattan building, which was completed in 2007. Perhaps greatest number significantly, it cut its dividend attached the one and the other classes of stock. (Dividends represent the income that keeps the house owners of a publicly traded gazette body rich.)

Slim’session move, and others, recommend a chop in where newspapers find their investors of last resort. Newspaper habitual devotion to labor lore long held that any gazette’s last-ditch buyer or investor was the local real estate tycoon. But now big-city evidence of victory newspapers are attracting interest from between nations moguls. London’sitting 171-year-old Evening Standard is nearing a deal to barter a controlling stake to Alexander Lebedev, one of Russia’s richest men (and a forgoing KGB agent). Lebedev has also discussed the possibility of buying British national newspaper The Independent as well.

Last May, it was disclosed Mr. Slim had taken a 1% wager in the Independent’sitting parent company, Ireland’s Independent News & Media (INME.I). In the U.S., Slim moreover owns a sizable stake in another New York establishing: Saks Inc. (SKS), operator of the Saks Fifth Avenue stores.