The Journal Blankets the Campaign

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 31, 2008 9:16 AM

NEW YORK--The Federal Reserve's effort to rescue Bear Stearns from imminent collapse was a classic Wall Street Journal story, stripped across the top of the front page amid saturation coverage in the paper.

But just below that was a lengthy piece about Barack Obama's national finance chairman, the "petite billionaire" Penny Pritzker, and a dispatch on violent protests in Tibet.

In the four months since Rupert Murdoch took over the nation's leading financial newspaper, the front page has assumed a harder edge, particularly on politics, establishing the Journal as a high-profile player in the presidential campaign.

Murdoch is "clearly interested in challenging the journalistic establishment," says Robert Thomson, the former editor of Murdoch's Times of London, in his first public comments as Journal publisher. "I think American journalism has some soul-searching to do. American newspapers generally have kept up poorly with change. . . . If there's a presumption that what you might call New York Times journalism is the pinnacle of our profession, the profession is in some difficulty."

The swipe at the Times is no accident. Murdoch and his lieutenants, who have made clear they want to challenge the paper for national supremacy, are not above a little trash-talking toward that end.

"Mr. Murdoch wants to see the paper take on added urgency and broaden its areas of coverage," says Marcus Brauchli, the Journal's top editor. "He's very engaged in news. He knows what's going on. He's got good strong ideas about journalism."

In an interview here in the shadow of Ground Zero, in a building the paper will soon abandon for Murdoch's News Corp. headquarters in Midtown, Brauchli acknowledged that the December takeover caused considerable anxiety. There were predictions that the owner of Fox News might push the news pages at the 2 million-circulation paper to the right or tart it up like his New York Post. Some big-name correspondents bailed out.

"I don't think anyone left us because Rupert Murdoch was coming," Brauchli says. "People left because they got a lot more money. Other companies raided us."

In an era in which newspapers are laying off staff and slashing budgets -- the Journal itself did a round of buyouts last year -- Murdoch is underwriting increased space in the paper and slightly enlarging the 40-person Washington bureau. Brauchli says he expects the newsroom staff of 750, up from 600 two years ago, to grow modestly this year.

Thomson says Murdoch is also opening his checkbook to beef up foreign coverage. "Strategically, Rupert is very much involved," Thomson says. "He loves newspapers. He's passionate about them."

Many current and former staffers are pleased. "Just about everything that's happened so far has been in the right direction," says Paul Steiger, who retired last year as the Journal's top editor. Murdoch "has given them money to expand the news hole and expand staffing. I'm not aware of any bad-Rupert fears manifesting themselves."

The steady flow of campaign stories on the Journal's front page is a departure for a newspaper that built its identity on business coverage, long features and quirky tales known as "A-heds."

Sometimes the Journal would all but ignore breaking news. In 1991, when Anita Hill's allegations of harassment against Clarence Thomas became front-page news across the country, the Journal gave it one paragraph in the front-page roundup column, saying Hill's charge "appears unlikely to delay or affect the outcome" of the Senate confirmation hearings. The next day, after the Thomas saga led the three network newscasts, the Journal ran two paragraphs in the roundup column.

The concept, dating to the 1940s, was that the Journal would be a second read for those who already had digested a local or national newspaper. Brauchli says that approach is now history.

"It's been fabulous to have a much higher appetite for political news during the most interesting campaign of my lifetime," says political columnist Gerald Seib.

The space for political reporting has roughly doubled, insiders say, and even what-happened-yesterday pieces ("Clinton Aims to Push Beyond Ohio and Texas") are winding up on Page 1. The Washington Wire column has been revived. But it is the more enterprising stories that are drawing attention.

The Journal ran a behind-the-scenes piece last month about Hillary Clinton aides Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald shouting at each other over a disputed commercial, opening the gates to a flood of stories about campaign infighting. An interview with John McCain on economic issues got big play, paired on Page 1 with a report on how a rivalry between blacks and Latinos could help Obama in the Texas primary.

Meanwhile, the fabled A-heds, which often ran at the top of the front page, have been generally pushed to the bottom of the page. On the day when the stories about Bear Stearns and Obama's fundraiser dominated the page, a feature -- squeezed into a tiny space below -- dealt with men buying girdles that are called by less embarrassing names.

John Harwood, a CNBC analyst who left the Journal last year, says the increased campaign coverage "reflects Murdoch's desire for a newsier paper, and for my former colleagues covering politics, that's a great thing. The question that will get asked over time is, does it erode some of the things that made the Journal great in the first place?"

In recent years, says political analyst Charlie Cook, the Journal "became a less essential read" for campaign junkies. "It was just barely above zero. Except for the business coverage and a fun story on the front page, I sure as hell haven't been reading it." Cook says the level of political reporting has improved lately, "but they've lost a lot of their horses."

Beyond politics, the Journal has added a weekly sports page and plans to launch a quarterly magazine that will focus on fashion and travel, which Brauchli promoted earlier this month on a swing through London, Paris and Milan. If that sounds un-Journal-like, he notes that the paper now runs recipes in its two-year-old Saturday edition.

Thomson, rather conveniently, uses the Times as a symbol of what he calls "self-serving" American journalism, describing "a sensibility that fetishizes prizes, that believes the length of a story is a measure of its worth." He says the Times has been unfair in its coverage of the Journal and leans to the left. "The New York Times is generally skewed," Thomson says.

The Times declines to respond in kind, and some Americans may bristle at the British editor's dismissiveness, which highlights that part of the Journal's brain trust was born elsewhere.

The concerns about Murdoch, whose properties range from 20th Century Fox to London's Sun and its topless Page 3 girls, centered on his well-documented history of influencing news judgments. Murdoch, who once donated $1 million to the California Republican Party, has had his New York Post go after selected liberal politicians, and yanked BBC News from his Sky TV satellite service in China to placate the Beijing authorities.

Slate media columnist Jack Shafer, one of Murdoch's sharpest critics, says his predictions about the Australian-born mogul ruining the Journal's reputation for fairness haven't yet come to pass. "I've seen no real pulling of punches so far, but it is the Murdoch pattern," he says. "I don't think he can resist. He never has."

Changes are hard to detect at the Journal's editorial pages, run by Paul Gigot, who recently had dinner with Murdoch. An owner has every right to influence editorial policy, but the pages seem as pugnaciously conservative as they were before the News Corp. takeover.

Brauchli was not immune to the turmoil that surrounded Murdoch's $5 billion bid for parent company Dow Jones. A former Asia correspondent who joined the Journal as a copy editor in 1984, Brauchli, then deputy managing editor, was offered the editor's job last April -- one day after News Corp. made its formal offer to the Bancroft family, which had controlled the company for nearly 80 years.

"It's possible, I suppose, they could have replaced me," Brauchli says. But Murdoch agreed to retain Brauchli and two other top editors as part of an agreement with the family to safeguard the paper's editorial independence. He invited Brauchli to breakfast soon afterward.

Murdoch addressed the staff's concerns in a meeting with the Washington bureau earlier this month. One staffer asked whether he would wield political influence at the Journal.

"What sells newspapers is news," Murdoch replied, according to participants. He said he was not an ideologue and noted that his newspapers in Britain and Australia had sometimes endorsed Labor Party candidates.

For now, at least, Murdoch seems to have calmed the staff. "At this point, people are both relieved and comfortable," Seib says. Brauchli says Murdoch sets "broad objectives" and lets his editors figure out how to meet them.

But he is acutely aware that Murdoch casts a long shadow. Last month -- utilizing a power that no other newspaper editor wields -- Brauchli changed the makeup of the Dow Jones industrial average, removing Honeywell and Altria and adding Chevron and Bank of America. He later noticed the decision being trashed on Honeywell message boards.

"They were all ranting about how Rupert Murdoch had done this," Brauchli says. "People see the hand of Murdoch whether it's there or not."

Update: As if to prove my point that the Journal is more of a Washington presence, the paper posted this scoop at 4:37 a.m. Monday:

"Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson is expected to announce his resignation Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, a decision that will deal a blow to the Bush administration's efforts to tackle the housing crisis.

"The exact reasons for Mr. Jackson's decision couldn't be learned. Earlier this month, two Democratic senators, Patty Murray of Washington and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, sent a letter to President Bush urging him to request Mr. Jackson's resignation, arguing that accusations of wrongdoing had made him ineffective."

Murdoch's New York Post, by contrast, goes with a big "INSULT" headline:

"The Bosnian girl who famously read a poem to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 1996 visit to the war-torn country is shocked -- and her countrymen infuriated -- that the former first lady claimed to have dodged sniper fire that day."

And the quote from 20-year-old Emina Bicakcic, on which the story was based: "I was surprised when I heard this."

Other columnists continue to smack Hillary around for her Bosnia fantasy, using the L-word. Jonathan Alter: "We know why politicians lie when they get in trouble . . . The Tuzla Tale tells us something about her insecurities and frustrations, which in turn helps explain why she's losing."

Frank Rich: "Most politicians lie . . . Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded?"

But Obama has been caught peddling his own myth about the Kennedys and his father. I wonder if he'll come under media sniper fire for that.

Peggy Noonan joins the fray, saying, like the male columnists, that Hillary's Bosnia tale is evidence of a deeper character flaw:

"This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.

"That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual) . . .

"Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves . . .

"You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness."

The Boston Globe profiles Obama's mother-in-law, without whom Barack says he probably couldn't have run for president.

At Just One Minute, Tom Maguire begins with an Obama comment and wonders if he dozed off and missed something:

" ' Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church,' Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, 'The View.' . . .

"So, when did Wright acknowledge that what he had said was deeply offensive and inappropriate? The AP story recounts some of Wright's controversial comments but oddly omits to mention his apology, as does all other news coverage with which I am familiar. And I am strangely certain that a Wright apology would have made the news -- unless he never made it publicly."

A little sleight-of-hand, perhaps?

Let's wind up with some TV critics. Time's James Poniewowik says Fox News has hit a rough patch:

"Fox hasn't gone soft, but from watching its coverage lately, I get a sense that the haven for conservative hosts, and viewers alienated by liberal news, needs to figure out its next act. Fox News is not simply a mouthpiece for the Bush White House: it rose with Bush after 2000 and 9/11, was played on TVs in his White House and reflected the same surety and flag-lapel-pin confidence in its tone and star-spangled look. It was not just a hit; it was the network of the moment.

"Now, with two Democrats locked in what seems like a general-election campaign and lame-duck Bush fading from the headlines, it has to figure out how not to seem like yesterday's news. At times recently, the network has appeared uncertain about its focus. Its primary-night coverage has felt staid and listless. Sometimes it has gone tabloid with celebrity-news, true-crime and scandal stories (WEBSITES POSTING SEXY PICS LIFTED FROM FACEBOOK)."

Of course, there were those who said Fox would flounder when the network no longer had President Bill Clinton to kick around.

Blogger Rick Ellis says it's getting old watching Keith Olbermann book the same left-leaning journalists:

"They're also appearing on 'Countdown' because they tend to reflect Olbermann's opinions on politics and pop culture, and at some point, it tends to be all a bit intellectually incestuous. The typical conversation consists of Olbermann saying, 'Point a, point b and then point c.' Then the guest agrees with all three points, and perhaps brings in point b2 as a way of expanding the conversation. It all has a 'Groundhog's Day' quality to it that I find maddening. . . .

"It also might be fun to intermittently bring in a guest who can nicely disagree with Olbermann."

Right, and Keith can definitely handle them if he'd allow such persons in the studio.

At the New Republic, Sacha Zimmerman laments the passing of Tucker Carlson's program:

"It was a fun show that addressed the topics of the day without devolving into Lou Dobbesian agendas, Chris Matthews-like scream fests, Bill O'Reilly smears, or Wolf Blitzer droning snoozers . . .

"Instead of the 'Tucker' show's use of analysts of every political stripe from every publication, think tank, or cause in Washington, 'Race for the White House' relies on a stable of MSNBC regulars to regurgitate the opinions they have been expressing all day on other MSNBC shows. It's a misuse of [David] Gregory's talents as well, which are better-suited to hard-hitting interviews than the crushing personality overload of 'Race for the White House.' "

The problem, says Zimmerman, is that "the iconoclastic Carlson doesn't fit into MSNBC's left-wing makeover."