Change is afoot at the Wall Street Journal. As of Wednesday, mega-mogul Rupert Murdoch is just a day shy of officially owning The Journal (although shareholders haven’t officially signed off on the sale yet), but he’s already looming large at the paper’s Dow Jones & Co. headquarters.
The New York Times:
For The Journal’s editors and reporters, this is a time of both anxiety and anticipation about what will happen when more than a century of independent family ownership reaches its end.
During the protracted takeover battle last spring and summer, many of them expressed concern that Mr. Murdoch would shape The Journal’s news pages to promote his own business and political interests—a News Corporation practice that The Journal itself documented in a long article—or simply cheapen the august paper.
But Mr. Murdoch also pledged to open the purse strings to expand The Journal’s reach, a prospect many people welcome at a newspaper with years of stagnant advertising revenue. Already, The Journal has offered significant raises to journalists it wants to hire and to some who were considering leaving the paper, with Mr. Murdoch calling some reporters personally to ask them to stay.
Mr. Murdoch has said that he wanted The Journal to step up its coverage of politics and national and international affairs, making it a more direct competitor to The New York Times. He has lobbied for more hard news and more succinct articles—a marked shift in tone for a newspaper whose signatures include long, often quirky news features that start on the front page.
There has even been talk of a front page with articles short enough to start and end there rather than continuing on inside pages, and of taking the words “Wall Street” out of the paper’s name to give it broader appeal, according to people who have been briefed on the matter. Both ideas were quickly dismissed, but the fact that they were raised even semiseriously shows how unconstrained by tradition the new owner is, these people said.
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By tyler, December 13, 2007 at 2:39 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
rupert murdoch represents what is wrong with capitalism in the US, if you can call it capitalism. Lets just call it waht it is, an oligarchy.
Report thisBy richard locicero, December 12, 2007 at 7:20 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Look, Murdoch has a very special franchise here. The new section is highly valued and its audience - the business and financial worl - wants “facts” not “fair and Balanced” coverage. If he turns it into the POST with stock charts he’ll soon find that he will have made the FINANCIAL TIMES the must read.
Still it would be nice if somebody remembered the Sherman and Clayton Anti-trust acts. But I guess, like Geneva Accords, they’re “quaint.”
Report thisBy measles, December 12, 2007 at 12:22 pm #
I urge any journalists opposed to this takeover to organize a walkout if indeed he tries to have them skew the news in his favor. Why let him bring down respectable journalists with a respectable paper?
Report thisBy mary, December 12, 2007 at 6:26 am #
I still wonder how this man got his US Citizenship. I’ll bet he didn’t go to the back of the line. Even if his ownership of so many news outlets is legal, is it really the spirit of that law. Shouldn’t citizenship be denied to someone whose sole objective is to control the news outlet of this country. Like Cheney and Bush, this old man will never be satisfied with his control and wealth. What a waste......
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, December 12, 2007 at 2:28 am #
Goes with the financial difficulties of the times we are in, uhh. Now he’ll be able to “condition” the news on interest rates, the dollar and the illusory M3 “money supply” of the Fed while they continue to print currency as fast as they want to:-
For decades, the Federal Reserve has published data on the money supply, and for many years the Fed set targets for money supply growth.
In the past two decades, a number of developments have broken down the relationship between money supply growth and the performance of the U.S. economy.
In July 2000, the Federal Reserve announced that it was no longer setting target ranges for money supply growth.
In March 2006, the Board of Governors ceased publishing the M3 monetary aggregate.... http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed49.html
...when one thinks about support in a market it usually means the last place where there was significant buying pressure as in “the stock market pulled back and I bought at support.” But the support .....is of a more stealthy nature -one that isn’t so readily apparent on the price chart, and that is the M3 money supply...... the in-appropriateness of the actions of the Federal Reserve or the future ramifications to our financial health of a hyper inflating broad money supply...... have been well documented elsewhere. This is about how trends in the M3 money supply affect trends in the stock market. “Holy Bubble, Batman - I thought the Fed didn’t manipulate the markets!!!” http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/lerner052304.html
* M3 includes M2 components, plus institutional money market mutual funds, large-denomination time deposits, repo agreements on U.S. government and federal agency securities, and Eurodollars held by U.S. addressees overseas.
Report thisBy Thomas Billis, December 12, 2007 at 1:06 am #
Well now along with New York Post there will be another paper to wrap fish in and put on the bottom of bird cages.If anyone thinks that Murdoch will be a hands off owner and that his opinions will not permeate the editorial pages please let me know whatever it is you are smoking or drinking because it is better than anything I know.
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