She might be 158 years old, but she’s still a hot date: The New York Times, that venerable Grey Lady, is getting a new lover. Carlos Slim, with a net worth estimated at $60 billion, became involved with the Times on Sept. 10, 2008 when he purchased a 6.4% common-stock stake in The New York Times Company. This made him the largest stockholder outside the Ochs-Sulzberger family, owners of the company since its inception. Until now, the Times has remained one of the only family-controlled major newspapers left in print.
Monday, Slim assisted the Times with its $1.1 billion debt, providing a $250 million loan. His second cash infusion in only a few months has tipped off observers that Slim may be headed for an outright takeover of the newspaper.
Commencing publication on Sept. 18, 1851, The New York Times has a reputation for a buttoned-down style. Venus is conjunct the Sun in late Virgo, which bestows this aura of propriety despite the many news reporting scandals the newspaper has endured since the early 1990s. What is interesting about the Times is that it commenced publication under some of the most revolutionary astrology ever documented, the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. Similar astrology opened the way for the French Revolution, the 1960s and many other eras in history characterized by surges of progress.
The Times also has Saturn in the mix. The conjunction of 1851 was actually a triple: Saturn, Uranus and Pluto are clustered in early Taurus, so there is a strange mix of reactive conservatism and revolutionary idealism. The Times has often embodied this psychic division, which is illustrated a second time in the chart by the Gemini Moon (for centaur fans, this is a Gemini Moon conjunct Nessus).
Pluto in Capricorn is now precisely trining the Times‘ Saturn-Uranus-Pluto conjunction, a suitable enough image of a door being opened to restructuring, modernization and new life.
Slim was born and bred in Mexico City. His father moved to Mexico from Lebanon in 1902, skipping the Ottoman army draft. Four of his brothers were already residing in Mexico, one of whom brought the first Arabic printing press to the country, and founded one of the first Lebanese magazines in Mexico.
Slim made his fortune in communications when he bought Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex), a fixed-line operator (as opposed to a mobile line, where the connection is wireless). Today, 90% of telephone lines in Mexico are operated through Telmex. He has amazing foresight when it comes to investments; he bought 3% of Apple stock right before it came out with the iMac in 1998, for example. He attributes this luck to information. He is versed in the work of his friend, the futurist/humanist Alvin Toffler, whose work explores digital and communication revolutions.
As the world gradually moves into another phase of potent Uranus-Pluto astrology, the revolutionary side of the Times, under Slim’s influence, may yet make itself known. But after enduring the fraudulent reporting of Keith Schneider in the 1990s, Jason Blair a decade later and other problems in between, longtime lovers of the newspaper would be grateful to have an extended phase wherein the newspaper became known for telling the truth.
— Shanna Philipson, Rachel Asher, Eric Francis