Good to hear: Even after the $250 million deal it struck with Carlos Slim, the Times still needs more cash in the short term. (The long term is a whole other story).

The deal, with W. P. Carey & Company, has yet to close, and the Times isn’t talking about the details, including the most crucial one: What kind of price is the Times getting for its portion of the Renzo Piano-designed building?

At one point, the Times thought the property was worth $850 million to $1 billion. But that was several collapsed banks ago–and bear in mind that it just had to agree to pay Slim 14 percent on his loan. So what kind of deal can it get for its real estate now?

Here’s one way to tell, via a clever MediaMemo reader: Check the stock price of Forest City Enterprises Inc. (FCE-A), the real estate developer that owns the rest of the building the Times is selling. The logic: If the New York Times Company (NYT) is forced to let go of its real estate at fire sale prices, it will devalue Forest City’s property, too.

One thing to look at might be where Forest City trades, since they’re theoretically impacted by the pricing. Granted, they’re a real estate company and so don’t have to mark real estate assets to market unless they’re held for sale (real estate is an operating asset for a real estate company), but the stock market will make some bets on the implications. If FCEA is up in a down market or vice versa, that’ll tell something.”

Interesting. So, for what it’s worth: As I type this, Forest City is up about six percent; the Dow is down 1.5 percent. Maybe the Times got some bang for its buck here after all.

If BoomTown had known on my recent visit that the New York Times (NYT) was trying to borrow money, using its spanking new building as collateral, I might have brought a big bag of greenbacks with me just to say I held a mortgage on the stunning edifice.

No matter, as I got a most excellent free tour of the Renzo Piano-designed building at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan and lunch last week from the Times’s longtime and sharp tech reporter Saul Hansell, whom I have known since AOL reigned supreme over the Web landscape.

(Apparently, his link-averse boss told him to watch me like a hawk on my visit, in case I might shoplift some secret tech news stories they were working on. As if the tiny but crack ATD blog team needs any kind of help from the big, bad Times!)

And, because I aim to annoy, I prodded Hansell into waxing a bit on the state of the Internet and the tech sector, from his new cubicle on the lower news floors of the really impressive Times HQ.

(Having worked in the sad-sack, grimy offices of two major newspapers, it is a revelation of what the newsroom of the future should look like.)

Listen up to what Hansell has to say, because while he is indeed worthy competition for ATD, the veteran reporter has been around the block and has picked up a thing or two.

Most importantly, he has also done an amazing job transforming himself in his new life as a blogger for the Times’s Bits blog.

Here’s the video interview:

The 52-story skyscraper, only part of which is used by the famed newspaper, was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano and is located between 40th and 41st Streets in midtown Manhattan.

He wrote:

Journalism, too, has moved on. Reality television, anonymous bloggers, the threat of ideologically driven global media enterprises–such forces have undermined newspapers’ traditional mission. Even as journalists at the Times adjust to their new home, they worry about the future. As advertising inches decline, the paper is literally shrinking; its page width was reduced in August. And some doubt that newspapers will even exist in print form a generation from now.

“Depending on your point of view, the Times Building can thus be read as a poignant expression of nostalgia or a reassertion of the paper’s highest values as it faces an uncertain future. Or, more likely, a bit of both.”

It’s an interesting insight about the changing nature of traditional journalism, whose very architecture might be shifting (more open and transparent) as its business does.

(There is also a really terrific multimedia look at the new offices here, which shows how you can take a story to new levels with not too much effort.)