The death of Arthur Sulzberger and departure of Marjorie Scardino have sparked palpitations at the New York Times and FT – because the number-crunchers might now take over

Two-and-a-half pretty significant things happened last week, all of them illuminating one of the great media conundrums of this or any other time. Who should be allowed to own newspapers? What’s the sanctified way of becoming that otherwise most loathed of all species: the press baron?

Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, the old (86 years) lord of the New York Times manor was a very good baron indeed. But would he have relished the send-off his beloved Gray Lady gave him, the endless pages of eulogy, the miles of roseate remembrance?

I rather doubt it. Sulzberger was a quiet, self-effacing chap who (as his executive editor Max Frankel recalled) would occasionally submit a little piece for publication – and never complain when it didn’t appear. He pottered the back roads of New York society, making connections, soothing irate advertisers, but otherwise he left his journalists to get on with it. He just watched their backs.

And he also built in a doughty “A” and “B” share stock structure that allowed the ruling family to survive as guardians of their treasure. “As many other well-known newspaper families have abandoned the business – most recently the Bancrofts of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal – so the Sulzbergers have remained steadfast in their belief that they were put on this earth to preserve and protect the New York Times“, wrote the Times business guru, Joe Nocera.

Shall we see Punch’s like again, many other NYT writers seemed to ask between the lines. Probably not: his son, Arthur Jr, is hands-on, occasionally maladroit and indubitably less revered. Now dad’s gone, no one can be utterly sure that the curse of the Bancrofts won’t eventually point its moving finger at the Times. Change in the highest reaches is always unsettling – which is absolutely the point about Marjorie Scardino’s retirement as chief executive of the Pearson Group, sparking palpitations at the FT.

The Financial Times accounts for only 4% or so of Pearson revenue. It makes useful money today, but it has lost pots of cash through some of the years Scardino was in overall charge. Come rain or shine, though, she stuck by it resolutely. The FT, she said, would only be sold “over my dead body”. She was a manager with a special gift for, and understanding of, journalism. She and her husband had a Pulitzer prize to prove it. But her successor is a finance man from Pearson’s dominant education division. He says how highly he values the Financial Times. Others think that could mean a £750m sale when the time is right. Come in Thomson Reuters? Bloomberg versus Dow Jones versus Reuters is all the pluralism the markets may think they need. We’ll see; but the bulwarks of passionate commitment may have weakened.

Meanwhile, over at the Independent Alexander Lebedev is under intense pressure. Prosecutors gather to charge him with hooliganism and assault after a John Prescott moment on a TV chat show. He says he’s making “contingency plans” for the papers he owns. He doesn’t deny that his businesses in Russia are losing cash, or difficult to sell. It’s only half a significant switch as yet. Since nobody can be quite sure why Lebedev bought the Evening Standard and Indy in the first place, nobody can tell how staunchly he’ll stick by them. But more uncertainty, more anxiety, more contingent fretting inevitably follow.

So there stand our three benign barons: a family stalwart, a corporate wizard, an unexpected oligarch. Some of the praise heaped upon them – by Nocera over Sulzberger’s share structure, for instance – is a touch astigmatic. Think of all the Wall Street wrath about Rupert Murdoch’s A/B shareholding that makes News Corp a family fiefdom. Think, too, of the Daily Mail and General Trust voting arrangement that sees Rothermere dominance go on and on. Was Punch Sulzberger a hero for never telling his editors what to do? So why can Jonathan Rothermere be criticised for not calling Paul Dacre to account over his paper’s McCann coverage?

The plain fact from this week of change is that there is no template for media ownership, constructed and imposed. Pluralism arrives from all points of the human compass. And if there’s one true enemy of journalism’s variety and independence, it enters wearing a white collar and dark suit, accompanied by accountants.

Just turn to the Economist of a few days ago and see what the phone-hacking furore and subsequent putative separation of News Corp into entertainment and newspaper divisions has meant out there on the stock exchanges: the “A” shares up 53% in a year and changing hands at $25 a time – the best since before credit crunching began.

Investors love what the hacking furore has forced Murdoch to do. It’s a split they’ve pushed for all along. Who wants to be wasting good money on words and pictures when cable TV and the rest are so much more profitable? Who wants to pay for Times of London or New York Post losses at a moment when (as Lebedev mordantly observes) “nobody’s buying newspapers”? Only, you fear, the best of the barons: the ones who put journalism first.

■ Diversification is the name of the survival game. But even so, you have to roll an eye over the Washington Post’s latest commercial buy whose profits will help to keep the paper going (or not). Yes, it’s a hospice.