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Printer-Friendly ModeMurdoch good news for WSJ
February 18, 2008 —
The Wall Street Journal is my favorite newspaper. It's also the best selling newspaper in the country. I don't count USA Today because their subscription data is tainted by hotel contracts. I can remember eagerly anticipating the prospect of and subsequent News Corporation takeover of the classic newspaper this summer. Let's be honest here, anything Rupert Murdoch touches turns to gold, and as a shareholder, the plan was music to my ears.
Murdoch took then-unknown Fox News Channel in 1996 and with the help of Roger Ailes, transformed the channel into the behemoth it is today: the most watched news channel in the United States. Now the liberals will tell you that the channel has an extreme right-wing bias. They'll tell you this while CNN is putting an "X" over the vice president and using known plants from the Clinton campaign as questioners at a Republican presidential debate. Sadly, jealously can make the very best go blind.
One of my political science professors said in a lecture one time that the News Corporation takeover of the Journal was not a good thing. He compared the eventual Murdoch-owned paper to the cable channel FOX, describing the low-end societal filth that tends to be portrayed on the channel and predicting a similar dilution when it came to the Journal's content and credibility. For the record, I don't know if he was joking; however this is why what he said is wrong:
To put it plainly, FOX has a market for crap. It sells. It has made the channel the highest rated among young adults. Likewise, stay-at-home moms tend to watch Jerry Springer, Judge Joe Brown, and the like.
There's no reason to bridge a gap between FOX and the Journal for the sole reason they share the same owner. Just as FOX has its own network, so too does the Journal, and a lucrative one at that. I tend to trust Murdoch's business-sense enough to be certain the Journal won't be clad with wife-beating headlines and trailer trash photo montages.
The Journal has always competed with the Times, both of New York and the U.K., however Murdoch's transformation of the Journal will seek to transform the dynamic of the competition. Instead of carrying around multiple newspapers in the morning, Murdoch and NewsCorp want their readers to read everything they need to know in just one paper: The Wall Street Journal. Increasing the Washington bureau only helps to achieve this goal.
There has also been talk of Murdoch doing away with the paid subscription format of the Journal online content. For years now, in a sudden "swimming up the stream" sort of way, if you want to read the Journal online - you have to pay. While that doesn't work for most newspapers (the New York Times recently did away with their service TimeSelect), it has been very successful for the Journal with 10.9 million users each month.
For months, the media speculated as to whether Murdoch wanted to open up that content to the general public, and generate revenue through advertisement in lieu of subscription rates. Murdoch put that speculation to rest earlier this month when he announced that a subscription plan would stay in place for some of the Journal's premium content.
All a part of his plan.