Will Carlos Slim improve the Times’ sports page?

With Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim becoming one of the New York Times’ biggest shareholders, David Rothkopf worries about the now “considerable influence in the hands of a guy who bears close watching re: his intentions.”

Slim typically plays it pretty close to the vest so it’s hard to know what his intentions for the paper might be. But this story did make me remember one anecdote from Brian Winter’s profile of the eccentric Slim (which we’ve now made available for free) in the November/December 2007 issue of FP:

When Slim granted an interview to USA Today in April, he made the reporter promise he would deliver to his editors an “improved” baseball box score design that Slim had specially created for the newspaper’s sports pages.

Now, the New York Times does a lot of things very well. But New Yorkers know that to get decent Mets or Yankees coverage, you really have to pick up the Daily News or the Post. Perhaps Slim — a Yankees fan incidentally — can liven up the gray lady’s sports section.

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