The New York Times Co. is under continued pressure to cut its dividends as credit quality deteriorates. According to the person who explains these things to us, this means it has to stop paying its shareholders so much money and use some of its finite cash to pay off its bonds (when it's explained to us like that actually just sounds like common sense). By not doing so the company creates more of a risk of default, since it has less to invest in the business end, also creating risk of lower earnings in the future (or so we're told).

Aha! So basically the shareholders are greedy and they're putting the newspaper at risk, and everyone's getting screwed. That's our version, anyway. Bloomberg explains the entire thing properly here.