Mugger: A White Knight

When a respected daily newspaper goes out of business, say New York’s Herald Tribune over 40 years ago, its loss is covered widely by competitors in the incestuous media community, and the eulogies, gallows’ humor and boozy wakes are described in often poignant and flowery detail. Then everyone gets back to work and leaves the carcass to rot. As time goes on, however, the paper is remembered by former staffers and observers with great lament and the legend grows. The natural question, of course, is if the property had been so popular while still publishing, why did it go belly up?

It’s very fortunate, then, that last week’s sale of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, among other entities, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. assures that the approximately two-million circulation national daily will survive and most likely prosper for decades to come. The Journal wasn’t in imminent danger of closing before Murdoch astonished its myriad of owners with a bid of $5 billion for the company, but in today’s media environment where onetime robust profits were the norm but have now largely evaporated, the layoffs and cutbacks that have affected the industry so drastically were sure to visit this essential newspaper as well.

Now, judging by the expected, but still hysterical, reaction from liberals, left-wingers and journalism professors about the supposed travesty of the widely loathed Murdoch acquiring the “crown jewel” of Dow Jones, you’d think that the paper had a subscription base of three million at the least. That would be wrong, since while the Journal is required reading for journalists—just as the New York Times is an occupational hazard conservatives must endure—I seriously doubt that the vast majority of MoveOn.org patriots and Daily Kos online scribblers shell out a buck and a half for the paper.

Here’s an example, which I don’t believe is uncommon. Earlier this year, I alerted a buddy of mine, who was a neighbor in Tribeca for many years, that a review of mine about several baseball books would appear in the next day’s Journal. This fellow, a diehard Democrat whose profession puts him at close proximity with the rich and powerful of that party, said, “Looking forward to it; this’ll be the first time I’ve ever bought that propaganda sheet for greedy Republicans.”

That’s why, upon reading the Times’ Aug. 2 editorial of Murdoch’s purchase, I didn’t spit up my coffee or become unreasonably cross with the children. In fact, had I been given the assignment the night before, it would’ve been a lay-up to write a decent parody of the Times’ forthcoming opinion. “If we were in any other business,” the writer begins, “a risky takeover of a powerful competitor might lead to celebration. Not in our business. Good journalism, which is an essential part of American democracy, thrives on competition.” It goes on to praise the Journal for its Pulitzer prizes, investigative reporting and “coverage of politics, international affairs and culture.” Pointedly, there was no mention of the Journal’s superb, admittedly conservative, editorial pages, for those opinions are what drive elite liberal journalists—and remember, the vast majority of political reporters and columnists vote Democratic—absolutely nuts.

You needn’t be a college graduate to recognize just how disingenuous this Times editorial is. First, most objective analysts would hardly describe Murdoch’s takeover as “risky,” given his global stable of media properties. What would’ve been far more “risky” is if the Bancroft clan, whose family has owned Dow Jones for a century, had acceded to pressure from moral arbiters like those who make decisions at the Times, and not accepted Murdoch’s 67 percent premium on shares of stock that were languishing earlier this year.

The 76-year-old Murdoch has said he’ll pour financial resources into Dow Jones, and, given the unquestionable fact that this acquisition is the pinnacle of his storied career, there’s little reason to believe, as some have speculated, that the Journal will soon resemble the mogul’s New York Post or London’s racy (by American standards) Sun. And a fortified Journal, with staff increases instead of reductions, definitely threatens the Times (and Financial Times as well), which often makes the brazen claim that its own business coverage is of the same caliber as its competitor.

Mike Allen, writing for the online Politico on Aug. 1, quotes an interview Murdoch gave the Journal on Nov. 5, 2005, which ought to, but probably won’t, give Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. a wicked case of the trots. Murdoch said:

“American journalists, you know, they put the New York Times on a pedestal, and that’s the model, and there’s a tremendous smugness about it, and they’re taught at the Columbia School of Journalism how special they are.” Certainly Murdoch was already angling for an eventual purchase of Dow Jones, and probably has for years, but when he said that the leftist leanings of the Times gave the Journal a “fantastic opportunity” to become “the great paper of record in this country,” by spending an enormous amount of money on foreign correspondents, for example, it doesn’t follow that he’d tart up the paper’s front page with Lotto giveaways and news about this or that Hollywood celebrity’s most recent rehab stint.

There’s nonsensical palaver right now about the effect Murdoch will have on the Journal’s news pages, which operate separately from the editorial section—unlike at the Times, there really is a wall between those departments at the Journal. Eric Alterman, the left-wing writer who actually believes the Times isn’t liberal, wrote these words in the Aug. 13 Nation:

“For all the—deserved—praise being heaped on the [Journal’s] news pages of late, its editorial pages already operate with Murdoch-like sleaze.” After denigrating Paul Gigot, the Journal’s extraordinary editorial page editor (and, by association, fine columnists such as Daniel Henninger, Holman Jenkins, Dorothy Rabinowitz and Brendan Miniter, to cite just a few), Alterman goes to say, “[W]ithout the power and prestige of the newspaper in which these edit page opinions come wrapped, they would be taken no more seriously than, say, the latest ravings of Rush Limbaugh or David Horowitz.”

We’ll see. In about a year’s time, as The Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and New York Times face further reduced circulation and staff layoffs, it might be the employees at those papers who wish big, bad and conservative Rupert Murdoch had bought their company instead.