But for better or worse, none of that matters to investors, who are trying to figure out what the company’s long-term prospects look like. In the near term, they look terrible.

In the first three months of this year, the New York Times Company (NYT) lost $74.5 million, or 34 cents a share once you factor out one-time charges, on revenue of $609 million. That’s worse than Wall Street’s low expectations of a five-cent loss on revenue of $630.8 million.

The reason, of course, is that the ad market is miserable in general, and even more so for newspapers. The company’s ad revenue was down 27 percent, notably worse than the awful 17.6 percent decline the Times recorded in the last quarter of 2008.

And as in the last quarter, former bright spots like the Internet business have now gone dark as well: Internet revenue was down 5.6 percent, Internet ad sales declined 6.1 percent, and revenue at the Times’s About.com unit dropped 4.7 percent.

Expect more of the same for the second quarter of this year, warns CEO Janet Robinson: “At this time, and it is early in the quarter, we believe the rate of decline in ad revenues in the second quarter will be similar to that of the first.”

The Times has been trimming costs (via salary cuts and layoffs) and has bought itself a bit of breathing room by getting rid of its dividend, taking on a very expensive loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and selling off assets like its Manhattan headquarters. It still has some moves it can make–it is trying to unload its stake in the Boston Red Sox and to find a buyer for the Boston Globe.

But at some point it’s going to have find a way to start selling more ads again. Because awards alone won’t save the paper–Pulitzers can’t even guarantee their winners’ continued employment.

The Times has stopped providing monthly revenue updates, but it has been pretty good about providing detail via its earnings calls. I’ll be on the road during today’s 11 a.m. call, but will check the transcript and get back to you later with the most interesting nuggets.

But that won’t work for the company’s fourth-quarter results since those show yet more weakness in its print businesses. So here’s some upside: At least the paper’s online business didn’t fall off a cliff in Q4–which is more than you can say about the New York Times.

The numbers:

• Newspaper division revenue was down 13 percent; the previous quarter it declined a mere seven percent.
• Print advertising declined 21 percent; that’s worse than the 14 percent decline the previous quarter.
• Revenues at the company’s magazine group were down 18 percent; in Q3 they were down a mere four percent. Newsweek’s revenue dropped 22 percent, and that decline will continue as the company pares back its circulation base.
• The good news I promised? Online revenue was up five percent, and display ads were up 10 percent. Both of those numbers represent decelerations from Q3, when overall online revenue was up 13 percent and display was up 32 percent. But that’s better than the folks over at the Times, who saw online ads shrink altogether in Q4.

Why would the Times see online revenue fall off a cliff while the Post only saw growth slow? I’m open to suggestions: The most obvious one is that the Times has much more national exposure than the Post (both companies also have regional papers in the mix, and the Times’s results include its About.com unit). But if anything, you’d think that disparity would benefit the Times. Anyone else want to weigh in?

Yesterday, for instance, the New York Times (NYT) provided a wealth of information about the state of the ad business. Here’s a summary, with an assist from Seeking Alpha, of stuff I found interesting:

What kinds of companies are still buying ads? Corporate advertisers like energy companies and financial companies–those that haven’t gone bust–trying to reassure customers; advocacy groups trying to influence the new administration.

Who’s cutting back? Hollywood: Fewer movies released, and less marketing money put behind each release (though that will change during awards season this spring); telcos, because there’s less growth out there; books, for obvious reasons.

Classified ads are killing us. Above and beyond anything else, the newspaper business is dying because its super-lucrative classified ads business is (still) dying. Technology, in the form of competition like Craigslist, critically wounded classifieds, and now the economy is finishing it off. The dropoff in the help-wanted category accounted for half of the the Times’s digital decline in Q4, said digital exec Martin Nisenholtz.

NewYorkTimes.com is a meaningful brand for display advertisers. Other properties–like About.com–aren’t. Nisenholtz says ad rates at NYT.com actually increased for most of the year. But About.com, which had been the company’s star digital performer, fell apart at the end of the year because of its display ad business–there’s nothing about the site’s brand or audience that commands a premium from display advertisers. The paper is now redesigning About.com to emphasize cost-per-click ads–that would be ads from Google (GOOG), primarily–because there’s still growth there.

Perhaps as much as 50 percent of the company’s digital inventory is sold by ad networks In response to a question, Nisenholtz wouldn’t put out an exact number. But he came close: “I would say that from an industry-wide perspective, you are probably looking today at around 50 percent. Some of our properties are above that, some of them are below that, but that’s about where the industry is at this point.”

The grim details are here, but I’ll save you some time:

• Revenue was down 13.9 percent, an acceleration from October’s 9.4 percent drop.
• Ad revenue was down 20.9 percent, an acceleration from October’s 16.2 percent drop.
• The really awful news: Internet ad revenue and overall Internet revenue actually declined in November, down 3.8 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.

In the good old days of 2007, the Times could at least say that while print revenue growth was slowing to a halt, Internet ad sales were growing quickly. By last month, the best thing you could say about Internet revenue at the Times was that it was still growing a little bit. Now that’s gone, too.

For the record, the Times says that it was still able to register “moderate” display ad growth at its newspapers, but that its online classifieds and real estate ads had gotten crushed, for obvious reasons. And over at About.com, which until now has been the bright spot on the Times’s financials, display ads shrank, wiping out out “moderate” growth in cost-per click ads.

And expect more of the same in December and in 2009. Martin Nisenholtz, the Times’s digital boss, has already warned investors that the “softness in November” would “accelerate into December” and that “next year is going to be a different year, by a fairly profound margin.”

Per usual, the one bit of good news in the Times’s numbers is that its readers continue to value its publications enough to pay for them: Circulation revenues increased 4.2 percent. But if the Times can’t convince advertisers to pay, too, that’s not going to matter. Happy holidays!

There was just a glimmer of news at the event, though it wasn’t surprising or pleasant: The Times’s Web business is falling away, day by day.

Digital head Martin Nisenholtz said revenue at his unit had been OK until the last two months of the year, but that there had been “softness in November, accelerating into December…next year is going to be a different year, by a fairly profound margin.”

Bear in mind that the Times’s digital performance pre-November was grim to begin with–digital revenue grew just 4.3 percent in October–and it becomes possible to imagine that digital revenue will decrease for at least part of 2009.

Nisenholtz didn’t do anything rash like attach any numbers to his comments, but he did add a little bit of color: His About.com unit, which is boosted by cost-per-click/search ads, is still doing OK-ish. But the business of selling display ads to Times Web sites is getting pummeled, and could be “under great stress” next year, he says.

So if About.com is doing (comparatively) well, why not sell that asset to help the paper escape its cash crunch? I asked CEO Janet Robinson that question after the event. She did everything but insist that the paper would never part with About.com, and praised it up and down–“an extremely important part of our digital future,” etc.

But given a couple chances to do so, she never explicitly ruled out a sale. Given the paper’s position, I don’t think she can.

[Image Credit: 1962 NYC Newspaper Strike photo from Life/Google archive)

The move is one of several the paper is going to make if it’s going to service its $1.1 billion debt load. It is also “re-evaluating assets” (i.e., looking for spare parts to sell), and while it has told its editorial staff that it will try not to fire anyone, it couldn’t make an ironclad promise.

That’s because the paper’s financial results continue to decline, and there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. Even the promise of the Internet, where the paper has been devoting substantial resources and effort, is dimming.

The newest numbers, released yesterday: Revenue at the company decreased 9.4 percent in October, which is an acceleration from September, when revenue dropped eight percent. Ad revenue dropped 16.2 percent, compared to a 13 percent drop in the previous month.

And while the paper’s digital side is still growing, it’s growing much more slowly: Internet ad revenue grew just 5.3 percent, down from 16.4 percent in September; total Internet revenue, including the company’s About.com unit, was up 4.3 percent, down from 11.7 percent.

Is there any good news? Just a sliver: The Times’s readers still value the paper. Circulation remains steady, but circulation revenue continues to creep up. It bumped up 3.9 percent last month, up from three percent growth in September. But it doesn’t matter how loyal the Times’s readership is if the company can’t pay its bills. Expect more turmoil ahead.

[Image Credit: Joe Shlabotnik]

The New York Times (NYT) is in lousy shape, so it needs to sell off About.com, the kind-of-portal, kind-of-blog-aggregator it bought from Primedia in 2005. So says Jason Calacanis, whose Mahalo.com is a kind-of-portal, kind-of-blog-aggregator.

Not true, say two people familiar with the Times and About; they say the paper isn’t shopping the property.

Calacanis, who made the remarks during the most recent This Week In Tech podcast, doesn’t go into much detail about his claim. Gawker has a link to the audio, but here’s the relevant transcript, in its entirety:

They’re going to have sell About. They’ve been trying to sell About.com, from what I understand.”

NYT spokeswoman Catherine Mathis offered up the standard we-don’t-comment-rumors-and-speculation line.

That said, it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen at some point in the future. The Times really does need money, and since About.com is both growing and profitable, it may be the most valuable asset the Times now owns.

But that’s exactly why the New York Times would be reluctant to part with it. Like it or not, About.com may well represent the Times’ future.

This isn’t the first time a Web reporter has suggested that About.com is on the block, by the way. I wrote the same thing earlier this year, and I was wrong then.