Fellow KMM blogger, James Raia, who writes "AutoMill," has a very interesting post on The "Wizend of Oz" (Rupert Murdoch) and how his takeover of the Wall Street Journal will affect the newspaper from a reporters point of view. As he points out, virtually all newspapers are being swallowed up by a small number of giant conglomerates, leading to a time in the not too distant future when editorial influence will be exerted by a handful of powerful men (As usual, they're all men!) A good case in point is multi billionaire Phil Anschutz, one of the richest and most secretive men in America. Over the last few years, he's been buying up newspapers around the country - His biggest catch was the San Francisco Examiner, which he has turned into a freesheet, so the paper is now advertiser driven. Anschutz has done the same with papers in Virginia and New England. As James points out... "At the WSJ. There will be changes and likely journalistic compromise as Murdoch's management trust takes over and looks for more ways to entice and keep advertisers." In fact, Murdoch has even said that one day he might close down the print edition and have the journal entirely on line. No doubt saving millions in costs by tossing the thousands who work on the paper onto the scrapheap. As the standard bearer for capitalism and free markets, it would be the least the Journal could do!
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The old Wall Street Journal's in there, somewhere!
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Interesting take on all of this, George.
This will shock you, but I don't completely agree. The premise you and James offer is that reporters will somehow be intimidated to change their political leanings and journalistic standards based on who their "boss" is.
I think that this is a little demeaning to reporters. Most, lets assume, at the WSJ are already more conservative politically than their brethren at other media outlets. Are we to assume that they will become more conservative due to the News Corp buyout? And for those more liberal reporters at the WSJ, are we to assume that they will intentionally tow the conservative company line now that Murdoch is the CEO of the corporation that now owns the paper?
I think that the paper will have the same tone as before...maybe more spice on page 2, but nothing to drastic. :-)
Posted by: Dan Tudor | August 3, 2007 9:59 PM | Permalink to Comment