Most people don't know that The New York Times Company owns a newspaper distribution company, called City & Suburban, that it founded in 1992. City & Suburban distributes the Times, the Wall Street Journal and about 200 other newspapers and magazines to newsstands, cafes and stores in the New York metro area. The Times created City & Suburban to reduce its dependency on the powerful, sometimes violent deliverer's union that once controlled in-town deliveries. Things have changed in sixteen years. "Wholesale distribution is no longer an economical business for the Times Company," NYT president Scott Heekin-Canedy said in a prepared statement. What he didn't say: Union clout has fallen enough that the Times can eliminate City & Suburban's 550 union jobs in favor of cheaper, non-union third-party distributors — that's how the Times already delivers nationwide. (Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan)

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