From their own shareholders (via Bloomberg News; hat tip: Daniel G):

New York Times Co. shareholders, led by Morgan Stanley, withheld 42 percent of their votes from directors to protest the Sulzberger family’s control over the company.

About 52.5 million of the 124.2 million shares voted declined to support the re-election of directors, New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said today at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in New York.

The withhold tally compared with 28 percent at last year’s meeting, which marked the beginning of a yearlong campaign by Morgan Stanley. The firm and it supporters, concerned about falling profits and a slumping share price, complained that New York Times’s two classes of stock give shareholders too little say in the company. Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
should give up one of his roles, they said.

The vote “is a clear mandate for meaningful change,”bMorgan Stanley said in a statement. “The withhold vote this yearbis significantly higher than last year and is an emphatic call for accountability.”

Flashback: Going down, down, down