Murdoch's Wall Street Journal

I wish I had a strong opinion about Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal. I don't regularly read its news pages, except for the features section on Friday (which I very much doubt he'll mess with; he'd better not, anyway). I read the editorial pages, but inasmuch as they're pro-business and conservative in ways consonant with Murdoch's worldview, they'll probably stay the same. Perhaps if I were a longtime Journal reader, I'd feel differently.

But I'm a midcareer print journalist in a declining industry, and have gotten used in the past few years to seeing colleagues laid off or accepting buyouts as part of restructuring, re: declining revenues. What Murdoch brings to Dow Jones, if nothing else, is stability. If I were a Wall Street Journal reporter, I would be glad that my employer was now deep-pocketed, and was going to shore up the flagging finances of my newspaper. Which is to say, was going to make it possible for me to stay employed for a few more years.

Full disclosure: I worked for Murdoch at the New York Post from 1998-2002. It was a great run. Though I personally didn't approve of everything that appeared in the paper, I was proud to work for it, and grateful for the opportunity. Some conservatives would ask me how I could stand to work for a newspaper that published [fill in the blank]. I told them the same way I could stand to work for The New York Times, which published [fill in the blank]. I was paid to write my opinion, and nobody told me to change my opinion to fit an agenda. No journalist works for a newspaper or a newspaper owner with whom he or she agrees 100 percent of the time (and if he or she does, chances are that's a dull newspaper). One thing that was so pleasurable about working for Murdoch's Post is that the newsroom was really a fun place to be. I've worked for five newspapers over the course of my career, and enjoyed each experience, but the Post was hands-down the most lively. Whatever his faults, and they are many, Murdoch is not sanctimonious about journalism. Career journalists have a tendency to get very high and mighty about what we do, which in turn can result in newspapers that are awfully dull. You see this in those long, eat-your-vegetables investigative series whose primary reason for existence is to impress judges in contests.

The worst thing about American newspapers? They're boring. They've got little life in them. Bland. Murdoch's NYPost is never bland. It's got real personality, both good and bad. But you can't be indifferent to it. It really does reflect the personality of the city it covers. And I think that's a great quality to have. While I wouldn't expect the Wall Street Journal to go tabloidy in its sensibilities -- that's not what the Journal is for -- I anticipate that Murdoch will add punch to its pages. Good! To say you can be engaging, but only by rejecting quality, is to embrace a false choice.

Incidentally, I once had dinner with Rupert and Wendy Murdoch, as part of a small delegation from the Post. It took no time to see why he's Rupert Murdoch and nobody else is. The man's mind never stops calculating. I'm not a business-oriented thinker (surprise!), but observing him and listening to him over the course of an evening left me thinking that I'd been in the presence of a creative genius, in his field -- indeed a visionary. One may not like the vision, but that doesn't mean the man doesn't have an immense talent.

P.S. One more thing -- American journalists tend to think of newspapers as part holy temple, part public utility. Neither conception is conducive to lively journalism, or the long term survival of newspapers. Murdoch, who really does love newspapers (I'd see him from time to time in the NYPost newsroom, his sleeves rolled up, working -- even though he had a multibillion world media empire to run), understands this, bless his heart.