The New York Times building in New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Aaron Elstein

A lot of folks in my profession have spent a lot of time assessing what the sale of The Washington Post means for the fate of The New York Times.

Its impossible to resist, isnt it? Clearly the papers have a lot in common, producing top-shelf journalism every day. Both too are owned by families that have been in the business for generations. (Crains is owned by a family, too, and I sure hope the Post sale doesnt give them any bright ideas.)

Apart from that warm and fuzzy stuff, here are some cold numbers that Im sure got noticed by the folks who own the Post and Times: Shares in Washington Post Co. rallied by 4.3% on Tuesday and are now fetching their highest levels since September 2008. Shares in the New York Times Co., meanwhile, rose by 1.7% but are still 20% below the level they got five years ago.

Its usually not worth reading much into one days stock performance. But today is an exception.

One obvious way to explain the rally in Post Co.’s shares is that investors are happy the company is no longer in the newspaper business, much as Time Warner investors were happy when that conglomerate said earlier this year it would no longer be in the magazine business or when News Corp. split off its publishing division.

Read More After Post sale, Times seems thin – In the Markets Blog | Crains New York Business.