The New York Times has been destroyed as a newspaper business. Now its working on destroying its brand.

A little more than a year ago, when the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim increased his stake in the New York Times Company (NYT), I wrote "I pity the Times Mexico bureau chief who has to tiptoe through who is and isn't out of favor with the paper's new sugar daddy." Now we have a very clear example of how the Times treats Slim within its pages; it's not pretty, and the journalistic compromise can be seen well beyond Mexico.

Carlos Slim clearly threw a life-line to the paper-of-record specifically because it was the paper of record. No doubt his thinking was that getting an unfavorable story suppressed in the New York Times would effectively muzzle the rest of the American media as well, who traditionally have followed the Times' narrative for the news of the day.

Sorry Charlie, but that day passed some years ago. The story was nevertheless reported in the Wallstreet Journal and Bloomberg. Ironically, in covering up Slim's shenanigans, the Times' deals itself a double injury. Its demonstrated that it can and has been bought, and perhaps worse, that buying off the Times doesn't get you what you expect it might.

The gray lady is a whore who disappoints, and it doesn't get much more pathetic than that.