'NYT' CEO on 'WSJ' Threat: We Do It Better

New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson has a message for Rupert Murdoch: Bring it on.

On the Times Co.'s just-completed quarterly results call, Robinson fielded a question about the threat Murdoch's reconfigured Wall Street Journal poses to the Times . The question came from an analyst who wanted to know if Robinson agreed with former Times executive editor Howell Raines, who wrote in Portfolio that Murdoch intends to use the Journal to eat the Times's lunch.

"I think we've always competed with national newspapers, certainly with USA Today and The Wall Street Journal," Robinson ventured cautiously. She went on:

We've competed with them for years and will continue to. From a standpoint of coverage, I think it's clear The Wall Street Journal is positioning quite differently in terms of overall coverage, broadening very much in the international and political arena, and, with the launch of their magazine, entering into broader lifestyle coverage.

That said, The New York Times has had broad coverage for 156 years now, and from that perspective we are far advanced in the type of journalism we create and the type of advertising we bring into the paper.

Robinson was also cagey in answering another analyst's query about whether the pressure from two hedge funds, which managed to negotiate a pair of seats on the Times Co.'s board, had played any part in shaping the company's strategic agenda of cost cuts, digital investment and portfolio "rebalancing."

"There's a lot of common ground that we feel we have with these directors," she said. "In regard to what we've done strategically, it's clear we agree with them and they agree with us...It's very similar to what the company has been doing day in and day out for a couple years now."