Murdoch's Journal

So much has happened in the media industry lately that's it's sometimes hard to remember that just two years ago there was so much fretting over Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the Wall Street Journal. There were fears that Murdoch would corrupt the Journal to support his own political interests (hasn't happened), that he'd tart it up with frivolous content (nope) or that he'd tilt the Journal's editorial-page stance strongly to the right (uh, it was already there).

In other words, most of the fears were ungrounded. The Journal is still a fine newspaper (and Web site). But it's now a very different publication, and with two years of perspective, Murdoch's strategy now seems apparent: To greatly broaden the Journal's mission beyond its traditional base as the nation's leading business newspaper and make it into a general-interest national newspaper. That, in turn, sets up what seems to be Murdoch's endgame: To patiently wait for The New York Times to collapse under the weight of mismanagement and financial problems, leaving the Journal as the last serious national newspaper standing.

I'm not the first or only one to suggest this. Slate's Jack Shafer—who started out highly critical of Murdoch's ownership (one of his more pungent critiques is linked above), conceded a year ago that Murdoch was, ahem, improving the Journal and going for bigger game. "Murdoch's design—stated and restated—was to knock the New York Times off its perch as the first newspaper the elites reach for each morning," Shafer wrote.

But Murdoch's scorched-earth strategy has become even clearer over the past year. The Journal's coverage of the presidential campaign was broad-based and first-rate, and increasingly, the paper's front page is leading with the big national or international story of the day, rather than the top business story. A few weeks ago, for instance, a fatal Washington Metro subway crash got centerpiece front-page treatment in the Journal, even though it had no visible business angle. That was a notable departure from the past. Inside the paper, you're increasingly as likely to find extensive coverage of a non-financial national or international story as you are to find deep coverage of corporate or financial developments.

This change is even more visible in the print Journal than on WSJ.com, for some reason. The Web site seems to remain more business-focused, in part because of the heavy amount of market data it features. But there seems to be less and less traditional business content in either version.

At the same time, The New York Times continues to falter, weighed down by massive debt and forced to sell assets to stay ahead of interest payments—"burning the furniture," as I heard it colorfully and aptly described recently. The Times' corporate leadership maintains that all is well, but not everyone is convinced. The Times needs a strong recovery from the recession, and it's not clear that's going to happen. There's been some speculation that Murdoch's real endgame is to buy the Times on the cheap, but why bother? If he makes the Journal the dominant national paper as the Times withers, he'll emerge the winner.

Murdoch's strategy has not been without cost. Longtime Journal fans (and I'm one) worry that the paper has moved too far away from the insightful, savvy and even entertaining coverage of the business world that had been its bread and butter for decades. The Journal's day in, day out business reporting—with some very notable exceptions—has become much more pedestrian lately, scrubbed of many of its formerly lovable quirks. That may reflect a recognition that a great deal of good business reporting and analysis is widely available elsewhere on the Web, something that threatens the futures of business-news stalwarts like BusinessWeek (for sale), Fortune (being redesigned and rethought, yet again) and Forbes (in management turmoil). In that context, the Journal is just smartly tacking in another direction.

Still, I miss the Journal's depth and insight into business coverage. It's just not as interesting a read as it was before Murdoch. The formerly wonderful and eclectic Marketplace section has been gutted, for instance, and a lot of the paper's former personality has gone by the wayside. That's what made it valuable and unique, and I daresay it's one of the things that made its much-vaunted online subscription model a success. Subscribers paid for the online(and offline) version of the Journal because there was nothing like it as a source of vital, interesting and readable financial news and information. 

As a general-interest publication, however, the Journal is much less distinct. Murdoch may win the war of attrition with The New York Times, but in victory, the Wall Street Journal may no longer be really special.

PS: Nice follow-on by Charles Warner, who suggests that the Journal is being significantly outpaced by The Economist on its core mission of business coverage. I can't disagree—The Economist is terrific.

Comments

[young Owen]

Can't argue. When I'm on the road I can get by without the Journal, though at home it's still one of my four subscriptions. And while I pay for the Kindle versions of the NYT and Chicago Tribune too, I wouldn't consider it for the WSJ--and I never even think of checking it on my iPhone. Mark has nailed it.

[Bob]

As you note, the move to general interest is a two-edged sword and the Journal's investigative coverage of business has slipped a lot, in my opinion.

Even though their coverage is really uneven and some of the reporters are pretty green, I find myself on the Bloomberg site more and more often, and on Rupert's Journal site somewhat less often than in the past.

About the supposed great success of the Journal in obtaining paid web site subscribers: Some evidence exists that once a paid subscription begins, it never ends even if the subscriber stops paying. I think the Journal finds unpaid "paid" subscriptions more valuable in setting its online ad rates than would be the case if it actually culled the freebies and restated its numbers.