The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

by Scott Galloway

Arthur Sulzberger and I took an immediate, almost visceral, disliking to one another. We saw the world differently and approached it from entirely different angles. My whole life has been a quest to gain relevance and fear of never achieving it, whereas Arthur’s biggest fear (I believe) was losing it. And to be clear, he was the CEO. He gave Janet Robinson the title just so he wouldn’t have to do the shit-work of a CEO—firing people, earnings calls, etc. However, he made the big decisions and collected CEO-level compensation. The Sulzbergers, like many media families, employ a dual-class shareholder structure to keep them in control. The thinking is that media plays a special role in our society and should not be subject to the short-term thinking of shareholders. Most use this (Google, Facebook, Cablevision) as a ruse for the families to maintain control of the company while diversifying their stake (that is, selling shares). The Times is not one of these companies. The family is deeply committed to journalism. And it was clear, after getting to know Arthur, that the financial health of the Times was meaningful, but only in the pursuit of the profound—the Times’ form of journalism. I imagine Arthur wakes up in a cold sweat frequently, fearing he could be the cousin that loses the New York Times. So, the Sulzbergers, like many newspaper families, owned a minority of the equity, 18 percent, but controlled ten of fifteen seats on the board. That meant that agitators like me ...