The Curious Capitalist commentariat, whose input I value deeply, is alarmed at my apparent soft spot for Rupert Murdoch. Asks Tom T:
What if he started telling you what to write, Justin? What if you were only allowed to write about the economics of John Edwards’ hair-cuts, Hillary’s wine tab at Veritas, and the cost of fueling Nancy Pelosi’s (fictitious) special private billion dollar plane? Would you do it? Or would you quit?
If those were the requirements, I guess I’d quit. But I already work, on the side, for a Murdoch operation, and those haven’t been the requirements: My book, The Myth of the Rational Market, is being published by HarperCollins, and, shockingly, Murdoch has yet to offer any editing suggestions. Which is how things work at most of his media properties most of the time, especially the “quality” ones. That said, it can’t be denied that he’s more likely to tamper with editorial decisions than just about any other media mogul operating today (I’m not counting Wendy McCaw as a mogul).
So if I were working at the W$J right now, I wouldn’t be jumping for joy at the prospect of Rupertization. But I doubt I’d be manning the barricades, either. In The New York Times yesterday, Andrew Ross Sorkin did a good job of sketching why many of us business journalists harbor a sneaking admiration for the guy:
The current state of financial affairs — caused by the continuing withering of print advertising revenues, shifting reader demographics and the seismic upheaval of the Internet — has made it extremely hard to continue “maintaining the quality” of The Journal (despite its clutch of Pulitzers) because sources of fresh investment funds are drying up. Dow Jones’s cash reserves have been further strained by the hefty dividends the Bancrofts have pushed for over the years. (Big dividends are in vogue in some newspaper quarters; The New York Times Company, for example, recently raised its dividend.)
So along comes Mr. Murdoch, who says he plans to invest more money in Dow Jones than anyone else imaginable. During an interview in his office on Thursday afternoon, he had this to say of the $5 billion price tag he had just attached to Dow Jones: “We don’t see that as the total investment at all.” In other words, even more money is on the way.
Mr. Murdoch spoke enthusiastically about opening new bureaus and expanding others. He wants to reverse The Journal’s diminished international strategy by investing heavily in the paper in Europe and Asia. He says he is spoiling for a fight with The Financial Times, in much the same way that he took the left-for-dead Times of London and made it a real competitor to The Telegraph. He talked about spending money on marketing and on greatly expanding The Journal’s brand online, leveraging the many media businesses he owns around the world.
Would Murdoch treat the Journal with the sort of kid-glove respect the Bancrofts have? No (and any promises he makes to that effect aren’t to be believed). Would he turn it into Fox News on paper? No, the Journal‘s target audience is too sophisticated to put up with that. Would he invest more in the business than the current ownership would? Almost certainly. The catch, though, is that he’s not immortal. A decade from now, the Journal might again be under intense pressure to cut costs, only this time as part of a big, faceless media conglomerate.
Update: Allan Sloan is less favorably inclined toward the Rupester (maybe it’s a generational thing?), but he thinks the deal is inevitable. (By the way, I think that’s my first-ever link to a Newsweek article. We’ll see if the ghost of Henry Luce strikes me down on the spot.)
Update 2: I’m still alive.
Update 3: Jack Shafer weighs in on Murdoch and is, as always, worth reading:
Murdoch doesn’t exasperate because he’s a conservative; he exasperates because he has no principles. In building his media empire, he’s been primarily interested in exercising power. Murdoch will ride a left-leaning politician, a right-leaning one, or a political pretzel, just as long as he can ride into the winner’s circle on the politician’s back.