As I have written before, Trump loves bad news about the media industry. He has said that he is “running against the crooked media,” so it follows that he would delight in the financial struggles of news outlets he considers political opponents.

Trump threw his latest jab as the New York Times Co. released its third-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The report showed total revenue of $1.1 billion through the first nine months of the year, down 1.7 percent from the same period in 2015. Operating profit stood at $46 million through three quarters, down 5.9 percent.

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That's not exactly fist-pumping news for the Times, but it does not suggest the massive decline claimed by Trump. Where did he get that 97 percent figure?

Apparently right here:

You don't need to have studied at Wharton to notice that Trump cited a number from the third-quarter column, not the year-to-date column. The third-quarter column is not the right place to find earnings figures for “this year.”

What's funny is that if Trump had taken numbers from the right place, he would have been able to say that the Times's net income dropped 224 percent. The company had net income of $11.2 million through the first three quarters of 2015 but a net loss of $13.8 million during the same period of 2016.

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Trump would have had to do some arithmetic to get the 224-percent number, however, because percentages greater than 100 are simply marked with an asterisk on the balance sheet.

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Whatever the number — 97 percent or 224 percent — the New York Times Co.'s net income figure requires some important context. To hear Trump tell it, the Times is careening toward financial ruin because voters are turning away from the newspaper's biased coverage. I prefer to think they are turning to The Washington Post.

In reality, however, the Times added 116,000 digital news subscribers in the third quarter. And circulation revenue rose 2.8 percent in the first nine months of the year.

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So what happened to net income? Go back to the balance sheet, and you'll see that the Times Co. has lost $41.8 million from “joint ventures” in 2016. That's way, way up from just $758,000 in 2015. Losing an extra $41.1 million on joint ventures more than accounts for the company's decline in net income.

What are these joint ventures? Follow the reference to footnote (g) and you get your answer: “In the first nine months of 2016, the company recorded $43.5 million loss from joint ventures, related to the announced closure of a paper mill operated by Madison Paper Industries, in which the company has an investment through a subsidiary.”

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That's right. The sharp drop in net income at the New York Times Co. is not about the newsroom, as Trump would have you believe; it is about the closure of a paper mill.