Report: Trump looking into buying New York Times

New York (WSYR-TV/CNN) - Outspoken New York real estate mogul Donald Trump has been holding meetings about possibly buying the New York Times Co., according to a report in New York Magazine.

The newspaper company has been hit by the financial problems that have dogged all of print media in recent years amid the growing competition from the Internet.

The “Old Gray Lady” has been losing money for a number of years. Most recently it posted a $43.7 million loss in the first nine months of last year.

Its new New York City headquarters is heavily mortgaged and the company carries significant other debt. And while its shares rose nearly 16 percent in 2012 and are slightly higher so far in 2013, the stock has lost more than half its value over the last five years.

But the majority of the company's voting shares are controlled by the Sulzberger family, which has insisted on numerous occasions it has no interest in selling control of the company.

And for the liberal Sulzberger family to sell to an outspoken conservative critic of both the Obama administration and the mainstream media seems particularly unlikely. The company declined to comment on the report.

Trump's office wouldn't comment specifically on the report, but it didn't rule out an attempt to buy the paper.