Dow Jones, Murdoch Reach a Deal

Correction: Every publicly traded company is for sale. No one said newspapers have to be publicly traded companies. But I guess it's too late for the Journal on that count.
I don't know that Rupert will ruin it right off the bat. Too many people are watching. But even if he runs it right, what happens when he's gone?
A sad day.

 

Folks get on these boards and moan and whine about the dying newspaper business and then a shrewd businessman (who makes most of his money in television and "new media") steps in and pays $5 billion for, essentially, a newspaper imprint ... and we're supposed to think it's the end of the world.

Maybe so. All these troubled, bright people couldn't be wrong, I guess.

 

Apparently I killed this thread. Sorry.

I will drop a little gem on you, though ... I was in a conversation with a "publishing trends insider" today who said he would not be surprised to see the WSJ eventually morph into a tabloid. This person said, and I do not know this for a fact, that the "European version of WSJ has been a tab for quite some time."

 

HH -


What good accrues to anyone - other than to profit the "shrewd businessman" - by Murdoch merely monetizing the WSJ brand? Does journalism suffer when Rupert steps in? It already has at many of his other "imprints."

And how shrewd a newspaperman he might be is an open question. How much does the NY Post lose every year? $8 million? 10? 15?

 

Again, I see a $5 billion vote of confidence in the business of newspapering. That should be good news for the business in the long run.

You and others may see something else.

I assume, and I may be wrong, that if George Soros (for instance) had bought the WSJ, there wouldn't be all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth. So it's really not a journalism business question at all, but something a bit more filtered through some partisan lens.

 

It's really not a partisan issue, HH, at least not for me. Murdoch bought a brand-name, not a newspaper, and paid $5 billion for it. He'll deploy that name, in one form or another, across the rest of his properties. In particular the cable business channel he's building. Certainly his right. My worry is what happens to the WSJ newsroom. Not through partisanship - Murdoch already has lots of megaphones, and the WSJ editorial pages are already far to the right - but through the devaluation of the journalism done there.

He didn't buy the WSJ to preserve it as a great newspaper. He bought it to bolster his other operations.

 

I believe the WSJ European format is called a Berliner.
The Lafayette paper, I think, recently converted to it.
Not fair to call a Berliner paper a tab, but not a broadsheet either. People here hear tab and they think New York Post. Europeans think, that's what a paper looks like.
Anyway, Murdoch bought a brand. It will spread beyond one crappy show on CNBC. It will become a financial news network that carries the Journal's prestige.
His ownership won't impact the op/ed pages. I doubt they'll reflect Murdoch's support of Hillary. And he'll probably increase newshole. Will he allow high-profile negative coverage of China? That remains to be seen.
Best guess is right now, it won't. But eventually, it will.
I was reading earlier the absolute mess that is the Dow Jones business side operation. Murdoch will fix all that. That's the big fish to fry. Then the cable news operation. I doubt if he gets around to the WSJ and serious editorial changes for years.
Might be dead by then anyway.