New Yorkers are scratching their heads over the latest eruption in the newspaper war in the metropolis. The New York Times issued a broadside Sunday, with a front-page dispatch attacking a favorite charity of the Daily News, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc. Rep. Anthony Weiner and City Council Member David Yassky, both Brooklyn Democrats, got suckered into the fray on the side of the Times, calling for a federal investigation into the foundation.

The Times demarche, which ran on its front page yesterday, criticizes the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation on three grounds. Instead of raising new money to re-open the statue after September 11, 2001, it says for openers, the foundation should have dipped into the principal of its existing endowment to fund the necessary improvements and security measures. It presses the point, even though it is unusual for charities to spend the principal in their endowments.

Indeed, when charities do dip into their endowments for that sort of spending, they are often criticized. An article in the New York Times last year about “budget problems” at “ailing” Mount Sinai hospital, for instance, referred to “unusual transactions” including what it says is the fact that “management drew off $17 million from a joint hospital-medical school endowment” that was classified as operating income. The Times later ran a correction saying the money was from “capital and gift funds” donated in earlier years.

Another Times story last year, about deficits at the National Rifle Association, noted, with apparent approval, differing practices at the Sierra Club. “The Sierra Club, for instance, invests the dues it receives from lifetime members in an endowment fund,” it paraphrased the Sierra Club’s chief financial officer, Louis Barnes, as saying. “Since its inception in 1950, the principal in the Sierra Club’s fund has been preserved and the interest earned has been used to support the club’s conservation programs as well as fulfill its obligations to its life members,” the Times trilled.

One could argue that the attacks of September 11, 2001, created an unusual circumstance that justified dipping into endowment principal. But one of the charities the Times uses in its own marketing, the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, responded to September 11 with more than $60 million in additional special fund-raising, not by asking its recipient charities like the UJA-Federation of New York, the New York City Police Foundation, and the Community Service Society to raid their own endowments, which far exceed $60 million in value.

Another ground on which the Times criticizes the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is that the foundation’s “combined endowment and general fund sank to $37.7 million last year, from $51 million in 2001, largely because of poorly performing investments.” Set aside the oddity of an article that manages in a fell swoop to criticize the charity both for not dipping into its assets and for allowing its assets to decline. The “last year” the article refers to was a fiscal year that began April 1, 2002, and ended March 31, 2003. During that period, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index was down 26.02%.The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation’s assets declined 26.07%.

To make a scandal, a front-page news article, a federal investigation, or even “poorly performing investments” out of assets that underperform the S&P index by five hundredths of a percentage point is the kind of stunt that marks a spat between newspapers. Even the New York Times Company’s stock price sank about 10% during that period. The Central Park Conservancy’s net assets declined to $99 million in June 2002 from $118 million in July 2000. Instead of a front-page news article complaining about poor performance, however, the Central Park Conservancy got a $4,650 donation from the Sulzberger Foundation, which is controlled by the family that controls the New York Times Company and is headquartered in the building that houses the Times newsroom.

The third prong of the Times’s attack yesterday on the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation has to do with the salary earned by the foundation’s president, Stephen Briganti. That was $298,667 for the year that ended March 31,2003. The Times argues that the salary is high, comparing it to the amount earned by the executive director of the Golden Gate National Parks Association, which the Times says was $188,300. But more relevant comparisons would be to New York charities. The president of the Central Park Conservancy, Regina Peruggi, was paid $290,000 for her work in the year ended June 2002. Her pension plan was less generous than Mr. Briganti’s, but his total compensation — $345,000 a year if you include the pension contribution — seems roughly in line with the local competition.

The Times’ Neediest Cases Fund is busy appealing to its readers to give money that is funneled through the Community Service Society of New York, whose director, David Jones, is paid $391,512 a year in salary and $45,157 in benefits. The Times Neediest Cases Fund also channels charity through the Children’s Aid Society, where chief executive Philip Coltoff’s total compensation for the year ended June 2002 was $346,000. The Neediest Cases Fund also channels charity to the UJA-s Federation of New York, where the top executive, John Ruskay, earned total compensation of $373,000. In other words, at least three of the charities for which the Times is out soliciting paid their executives more than did the charity that the Times is attacking in a front-page article for having overpaid its executive.

The point here is not to disparage the Times’s Neediest Cases Fund or the Sulzberger Foundation or the charities they support or the executives who work there. They all do fine work. But we’re also fans of the Statue of Liberty and of Ellis Island, not to mention the foundation that supports them. Aside from that, though, we’ve got no special stake in this one; it’s the Daily News’s charity, not ours. Yet it does strike us that the city, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island would be better off if the Times could manage to find a better way to compete with the Daily News than by dragging the good name of a charity through the mud.