RM + WSJ: Let's Do The Math

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 14, 2007

While much of organized journalism recoils in horror from Rupert Murdoch's latest business gamble, let's see, as a thought experiment, if we can construct a case for his taking over the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper business is battered these days, with rich folks buying up properties at fire-sale prices and proceeding to slash costs. Avista Capital Partners just cut 50 newsroom jobs at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Philadelphia public relations executive Brian Tierney laid off 71 at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Chicago real-estate mogul Sam Zell hasn't taken a wrecking ball to the Tribune papers yet, but the chain's jewel, the Los Angeles Times, announced plans to eliminate another 150 editorial jobs. And none of these new owners had a previous day of newspaper experience.

Along comes Murdoch with a generous offer to buy Dow Jones, and he's not talking about slashing costs. In fact, he told the New York Times he wants to expand the Journal's Washington coverage.

Love him or hate him, the Australian-born newspaperman knows something about running media businesses. He created a fourth American network, won the rights to NFL football, built the top-rated cable news channel and snatched up the hugely popular networking site MySpace. Now, at 76, he wants to own the nation's premier financial newspaper so badly he offered to pay two-thirds more than the parent company's stock was worth.

Murdoch runs a successful public company in News Corp., but he has shown a high tolerance for losing money on such properties as the New York Post and the Weekly Standard. And since the Journal already has a pugnaciously conservative editorial page, the impact there would be minimal.

The concern, of course, is the news pages, and whether Murdoch can keep his thumb off the journalistic scale. Is he smart enough to realize that meddling would ruin the very asset he thinks is worth $5 billion?

The record is not encouraging, and not because Murdoch is a committed conservative; rather, he is a man of shifting political alliances whose media outlets tend to follow his lead.

He is a throwback to the William Randolph Hearst era, when publishers were openly partisan, made backroom deals and even ran for office. And Murdoch makes no secret of his views. At a conference last month, he praised President Bush as "persuasive, strong and articulate" and told Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot: "Apart from your newspaper and mine, there's a sort of monolithic attack on him every day of the year."

This is an owner who thought nothing of donating $1 million to the California Republican Party in 1996 or, more recently, hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Anyone who thinks that didn't result in more respectful coverage of the senator in the New York Post hasn't been reading that paper very carefully.

To win control of the nearly bankrupt Times of London and Sunday Times in the early 1980s, the owner of the tabloid Sun -- famous for its topless Page Three girls -- made promises of editorial independence. Harold Evans, who was later ousted as Sunday Times editor, says Murdoch broke those promises. In a book, interestingly enough, Evans wrote that Murdoch ordered up more sports pages at the expense of financial coverage, saying: "What do you want this [garbage] for, anyway? Two pages is plenty for business news."

Murdoch and his British newspapers were staunch supporters of Margaret Thatcher. But after a dinner with Tony Blair, followed by a Blair appearance at a News Corp. conference, the Sun hailed the Labor leader's "Maggie-style crusade" to "make Britain fit for the 21st century."

Murdoch's willingness to play politics while pursuing business with China is well documented. He dropped the BBC from his satellite television service after complaints from the Chinese, and his HarperCollins publishers killed a book by a former Hong Kong governor that criticized Chinese officials. As Slate's Jack Shafer and others have observed, the Journal won a Pulitzer last month for reporting on dangerous conditions and inequality in China. Would such reporting fall out of favor if Murdoch ran the place?

Beyond that, there is no shortage of people who think Murdoch's Fox News Channel is less than fair and balanced. Little wonder, then, that the Journal's union denounced the Murdoch bid and dozens of staffers have signed letters of opposition to the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones and so far has rebuffed Murdoch.

If he does gain control of the Journal, Murdoch would also have to suppress his schlockmeister instincts, most recently on display with the aborted deal for that odious O.J. Simpson book and television special "If I Did It."

Given this track record, could Murdoch be a reasonable steward of the Journal? In any other field, a mogul buys a company and issues marching orders as he sees fit. Only with a news organization is a wealthy owner supposed to spend big bucks and then keep his hands off the core product, even allowing his employees to scrutinize him and his friends.

Murdoch, who wound up more than doubling the Times of London's circulation, says he would keep the Journal's management team. Could he surprise his detractors by buying the paper and showing restraint?

Last week, the Herald Sun of Australia reported on its owner's "bold plan" to reduce News Corp.'s carbon footprint to zero within three years. "Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats," the boss was quoted as saying. Rupert Murdoch, crusader against global warming? Maybe late-in-life conversions aren't impossible. Or maybe Murdoch just excels at mouthing the right words.

An Understated Pitch

The Washington ad campaign is a model of British understatement: "Avoid the pedestrian." "Leader's Digest." "International intelligence estimate."

John Micklethwait, editor of the Economist, says the radio spots and billboards are aimed not "at the guy who lives in Georgetown and works at the State Department, but the family who lives in Falls Church" and is affected by global economic change.

The Economist sells 1.2 million copies worldwide -- more than half in North America -- and its D.C. circulation has risen by one-third in three years, to 36,000. Micklethwait says he's positioning it as an opinionated "synopsis" of the week's news in an Internet age: "We are quite useful as a filter. . . . We have looked at it all and this is what we think you need to know."

The 164-year-old London magazine -- a finalist for a National Magazine Award in its first year of eligibility -- fields 10 correspondents in the States. "If people don't think we cover America well, they'll be unlikely to trust us on the other stuff," Micklethwait says.

The writing is tight, foreign policy and economics get ample space, and the likes of Paris Hilton (jail term or not) are conspicuously absent. Last week's cover story was titled "The Battle for Turkey's Soul." Vladimir Putin made the cover depicted as a gangster, and after the Virginia Tech shootings the cover image was a star-spangled gun, with the headline "America's Tragedy."

That story demonstrated that the magazine is not Time or Newsweek with an Oxford accent. It said the National Rifle Association "constantly exaggerates the threat to gun-owners" and that "few urban Americans swallow this twaddle," although some rural people "think anti-gun Democrats are wusses." Similarly, a piece on Rudy Giuliani declared: "He has a hideous temper and a tendency to bully. . . . He is famously and foolishly intolerant of criticism. . . . Mr. Giuliani has at times shown woeful judgment."

Micklethwait says the weekly is liberal on social issues -- favoring, for example, gay marriage -- and conservative on trade and economics. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Economist demanded in an editorial that Donald Rumsfeld resign, but it remains a staunch supporter of the Iraq war. "It's a somewhat lonely place," Micklethwait says.

The magazine clings to one ancient tradition: no bylines. "The Economist tries to speak with one voice," Micklethwait explains.

Gregory in the Morning?

NBC White House correspondent David Gregory is getting a tryout this week in MSNBC's old "Imus in the Morning" slot, following last week's stint by the cable network's Joe Scarborough. Gregory's show is the first that will be carried by WFAN, Imus's old New York radio outlet. "I am intrigued by this, but I am also very happy doing what I'm doing at NBC," Gregory says.