Greg Sargent wonders why the liberal blogosphere isn’t squawking about Rupert Murdoch’s bid for the Journal. Obviously most of the liberal blogosphere hears “Journal” and thinks of the Whitewater-crazed loonies who spent most of a decade spinning Vincent Foster conspiracy theories. For anyone inclined to view the world through a partisan lens, the Journal’s editorial page has long overshadowed its higher-quality news coverage. Murdoch buying that gang? It’s “Shelob acquiring Barad-Dur, Inc.” Let them eat one another and spit out the bones!
But there’s also a sense in which the defense of the Journal’s “quality” newsroom is a rearguard action on behalf of a dying tradition. And many people who identify themselves as bloggers, whether on the left or the right, and whether they value the Journal’s great features (as I do) or not, may feel about that tradition the way they feel about the 19th-century novel or the Hollywood comedies of the ’30s. These things are grand, but, like it or not, their time has passed. A newsroom like the Journal’s will not and cannot exist a generation from now unless someone starts figuring out how to pay for it.
John Heilemann’s take in New York is a little contrarian and well worth reading:
Did anybody at Dow Jones ever contemplate purchasing MySpace? Did Arthur Sulzberger or Don Graham? I don’t know, but I’d wager they didn’t even know what MySpace was. The obvious retort is, Why should they have? What does social networking have to do with journalism? And, no doubt, a precise answer is hard to conjure. But if you don’t believe that the intermingling of these spheres will be central to how future generations consume their news, you’ve apparently been sleeping—and clearly don’t have kids.
Not that Murdoch or his people have the future figured out. But they’re groping toward it with purpose and energy—which is more than you can say for Dow Jones. God knows Murdoch’s politics aren’t my brand of vodka. But you have to admire the way he’s been an unrelenting force for change and modernization in the media racket, the way he’s shaped and adapted to epic transformations of platforms and technologies. The problem with America’s newspaper-family dynasties is that, to a greater or lesser degree, they still believe they’re in the same business they were in 30 years ago. Murdoch doesn’t—and he knows, too, that newspapers can’t be any kind of public trust if the public sees them as yesterday’s news.
For those who think that the Bancroft family’s pride-of-ownership will save the Journal from Rupert’s clutches, I say, think again. Murdoch has offered a huge premium on the Dow Jones stock price. The Bancrofts’ control is apparently only a little over 50 percent. All Murdoch needs is one or two heirs or heiresses to say, “Wait a minute, this is good money, what are we thinking?” and the prize is his. I don’t think there are too many other people out there with the resources to pay such an inflated price or the desire to sink that much cash into what market analysts politely call a “sunset industry.”
Every year the Journal’s publisher seizes the op-ed page for a letter to readers, and every year this missive touts the publication’s “faith in the wisdom of markets.” What’s happening here is simple: the market is having its way with the Journal. The result may not be ideal for those of us who love 5000-word features, but it is surely a kind of ironic justice.
[tags]Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, journalism, dow jones[/tags]
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