Pinch, Punch and Slim

Young Sulzbergers are inculcated into the spirit of serving from an early age. By 10 they go to their first family meetings, and by 15 they are expected to understand their role as protectors of the brand. The problem is that Pinch, as the chairman Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr is often called, stands accused of having got the Times into this mess. With his father, Punch, he bought the Boston Globe, a now grievously stricken title, at a dangerously inflated price, then spent $600m on the newspaper's new Renzo Piano offices that instantly became a monument to old media hubris. Over the past decade, Pinch has spent nearly $3bn buying back Times stock to bolster the share price - leaving the company undiversified and hence highly vulnerable to the downturn in advertising revenue - as well as artificially boosting the dividend in a move interpreted by many as a bid to keep his relatives happy. The thought that really disturbs staffers is that he could have used all that money to buy Google before it went public: he was said to have been offered the search engine and rejected it.

Life and New York Times, from the Guardian.

In the video which follows, Kirsty MacColl terrifies a roomful of German teenagers.