Yesterday the New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes and executive editor Bill Keller took a well-deserved victory lap with a speech that reportedly had his newsroom in tears. 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 company saw ad sales drop 27 percent, and the Internet no longer helps: Web ad sales were down 6.1 percent. The company says to expect more of the same, for a while.

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Last fall, the New York Times tried boosting its cash position by slashing its dividend from 23 cents a share to 6 cents a share. Not good enough: The paper is now doing away with its quarterly payout altogether–at least temporarily.

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The New York Times had a bad December, and a lousy end to 2008. That isn’t a surprise. What is a bit shocking is that the paper’s digital ads are now vanishing almost as quickly as its print ads.

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One of the supposed buyers for the New York Times’s stake in the Boston Red Sox–one of the few assets the paper can unload as it tries to bail itself out of a cash crunch and looming debt problem–says he’s not buying.

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The New York Times is running low on cash but has a $400 million debt payment due next spring. How to foot the bill? Raise money anywhere it can. Last month, the Times cut its dividend, a move that could save it up to $100 million a year. Now the paper is looking to borrow against its new Manhattan headquarters: It has hired a real estate firm to raise up to $225 million using the value of the building as collateral.

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