Author Archive
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The Kicker
Don’t Listen to Searby
July 26, 2007 12:46 PMThe New York Times Co. reported yesterday that its second-quarter earnings fell from the same period a year ago. No surprise there. But, please, don't listen to Frederick Searby, a J.P. Morgan Securities analyst and all other... Continue reading
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The Audit
What the Bancrofts Owe Dow Jones
July 19, 2007 11:38 AMIt's on the Bancrofts now. That hard-bargaining Dow Jones & Co. board has agreed to sell the Bancroft's patrimony for 60 pieces of silver and a piece of paper that says Rupert Murdoch won't ruin the The Wall Street Journal.... Continue reading
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The Kicker
The Right Prescription in the Journal
July 13, 2007 10:30 AMKudos and a smart salute to Sarah Rubenstein and the WSJ for a tough and intelligent story on Big Pharma quietly backing a nonprofit group in its efforts to get state legislators to tie the hands of pharmacists who... Continue reading
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The Audit
Parsing the Anonymice at Dow Jones and the Journal
July 10, 2007 11:23 AMThis New York Times piece from Monday says an unnamed person connected to Dow Jones management and unnamed senior editors at The Wall Street Journal are promising job cuts if the News Corp. offer isn't accepted. If the $5... Continue reading
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The Audit
Ottaway to Bancrofts: Resist the Murdoch Temptation
July 9, 2007 10:45 AMIf Dow Jones & Co.'s board agrees to a sale to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., as seems likely, the transaction would have to be approved by DJ shareholders, principally by holders of so-called Class B shares who control 62% of... Continue reading
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The Audit
Independence Day
July 3, 2007 03:21 PMYet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. —Tom Paine, The American Crisis The board of directors of the corporation, when evaluating any actions or transactions described in paragraph (a) of... Continue reading
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The Audit
Why News Corp. Can’t Cover the U.S. Business Story
June 29, 2007 12:40 PMThe business press, I have to say, has done a terrific job vetting News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch as potential owners of the nation's leading financial organ, The Wall Street Journal. The press rightly understands a broader community interest in... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Pitiful
June 26, 2007 10:20 AMThis News Corp. statement speaks for itself. It comes near the beginning of the second day of The New York Times series on Rupert Murdoch's company, and it tells business-press readers all they need to know about about why... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Don’t Miss The Post Cheney Series
June 25, 2007 12:29 PMThe Washington Post series, by Bart Gellman (The Audit's onetime officemate, I'm proud to say) and Jo Becker, so far gives readers wonderful insight into how things actualy work in Washington, and it reads like a dream. How Cheney... Continue reading
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The Kicker
The Audit Recommends…
June 25, 2007 11:01 AMBusiness-press readers get even more reasons to oppose a Dow Jones sale to News Corp. from The New Yorker's rundown of Rupert Murdoch's past misuses of news pages for personal or corporate interests (The Audit is mentioned toward the... Continue reading
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The Audit
Agency Problems at Dow Jones and the WSJ
June 21, 2007 04:03 PMYou can't tell the players without a scorecard, and today The Audit will spell out where the economic interests of business-side and news-side executives at Dow Jones & Co. and its prized asset, The Wall Street Journal, stand in regard... Continue reading
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The Audit
Secular vs. Cyclical
June 19, 2007 11:46 AMJack Shafer finds a page one piece in Sunday's New York Times about a slowdown in online retail sales to be bogus, another forced trend story. The original story says that online sales growth is slowing from a peak... Continue reading
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The Audit
Changes at the Journal
June 14, 2007 01:40 PMThe Wall Street Journal's new managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, made some changes in the newsroom that are bold if nothing else. When was the last time you heard of senior editors being stripped of their titles? His memo to the... Continue reading
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The Audit
The WSJ Story is Fine, But…
June 13, 2007 11:41 AMThe WSJ did a story last week on the explosive growth of state-owned insurers of last resort. This is a fine story that makes an important point: the public has quietly been taking on massive liabilities, particularly since the... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Samuelson says there’s nothing to be done
June 7, 2007 12:27 PMThe Washington Post's Robert Samuelson today weighs in with an informed column on cultural changes affecting income inequality. His conclusion: it's not necessarily bad and its roots are too complicated to do much about anyway. He also hopes the... Continue reading
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The Audit
Loss of Wartzman column reveals LAT’s biz coverage priorities
June 6, 2007 04:11 PMOne of The Audit's numerous sources in the business press passes along the following letter by Peter Dreier, a politics and policy professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, to Los Angeles Times business-page editors. The letter (it's not a... Continue reading
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The Audit
How to Kill a Story
June 5, 2007 10:31 AMHow do you kill a story? It must be hard, right? All reporters know the truth: any monkey can do it. "Are you sure of your facts? Have you got a smoking gun here?" Or how about: You're "boring people."... Continue reading
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The Audit
Great story; a concern and a thought
June 4, 2007 10:32 AMBusiness-press readers and family therapy buffs alike will get a kick out The Wall Street Journal's Saturday story on discussions among the Bancrofts, controlling shareholders of the newspaper's publisher, Dow Jones & Co., about whether to sell to Rupert Murdoch's... Continue reading
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The Audit
Financial Times Bears Down
June 1, 2007 11:37 AMThe Audit can't resist the two-column, paper-leading story (badly underplayed on the Web) by Saskia Scholtes, who got hold of a letter from a hedge fund group complaining to a trade association that banks are doing too much to... Continue reading
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The Kicker
DJ’s unsuitable suitors
June 1, 2007 10:13 AMThe news that Dow Jones & Co.'s controlling Bancroft family will consider selling the company, including to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., while not a surprise, is still a shock. Neither public company mentioned as a potential suitor mentioned... Continue reading
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