In December 2008, a year after* Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. purchased The Wall Street Journal, the paper had a holiday “party.” Each news department was escorted separately, in turn, into a brightly lit conference room. A large horseshoe-shaped conference table took up most of the space, leaving little room to stand. Amenities were sparse. “They spent maybe $30 on the little plastic wineglasses,” recalls a reporter who, like nearly every Journal employee interviewed for this article, requested anonymity. Everyone hovered awkwardly at the side of the horseshoe. Then Robert Thomson, the Australian editor hired by Murdoch to run the paper, made his entrance. He seemed—and Journal reporters often characterize him this way—unsure of what to say to his employees. “He said we were up seven percentage points. He said something about a focus group. He told us we were moving the needle,” the reporter says. “After an hour, they flashed the lights and it was time for another group to come in. I thought, ‘Thanks, that’s really why we went into journalism. To move the needle.’”
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The Wallenberg story only underscores Thomson's overall point.
I thought the Wallenberg story was interesting but at 5,000 words, it was too long already for a daily financial newspaper. It started to lose me about halfway through. It had obvously been written by someone who had become so absorbed in it, that he didn't realize other people were probably not so fascinated, and I would never have read three installments of 5,000 words each.
The WSJ published many long stories on the financial crisis, which I read thoroughly and avidly because -- that's what most of us read the WSJ for. Did it never occur to the reporter that he could produce a feature for the WSJ and then write a book?
If the WSJ's "competitive advantage" is being squandered, then why is it holding up the best among all US newspapers -- many of which are cutting 10, 15, 20, 30 percent of their staff at one go? Why is it doing better than virtually any business magazine? What is the WSJ losing the competition to? If people wanted more long-form business journalism, they could have read PORTFOLIO. They didn't. Where's the logic here?
Thomson is correct and this whole routine about Rupert the destroyer is just stale paranoia.
Posted by Diane on Tue 5 May 2009 at 11:37 PM
Thanks for this analysis. To me, the Journal has become almost impossible to read. It's hard to believe this dumbed-down rag is the same newspaper that once contained so many great stories.
Sad!
Posted by ally on Wed 6 May 2009 at 01:15 AM
Liza,
What are you talking about? The WSJ is the only newspaper left that doesn't kiss Barack Obama's buttock's. Journalists in this country are no longer journalists, they don't present two sides of a story! They are servants to their master...their anointed one! Sooner or later they will regret what his administration has created...a debtors life they will never escape from!
Posted by joey on Wed 6 May 2009 at 10:34 AM
Let's see...almost every newspaper in the country is going broke, yet the Journal has increased circulation (as it has increased price).
As a longtime reader, I find the paper, unexpectedly, very much improved -- both in redesign (pre-Murdoch) and now in content (Murdoch/Thomson). There's more domestic, political and international coverage without sacrificing anything (and perhaps even improving) on the business side.
If more journalistic enterprises were focused on moving the needle (which Barney Kilgore clearly did, in this story to his credit, while Thomson seems made light of for the same intention) perhaps the industry wouldn't be in the financially disasterous condition in which it finds itself today.
Posted by Jim on Wed 6 May 2009 at 10:45 AM
Until 1967, all newspapers could afford to be self-indulgent. Comparing the glory days of newspapers to the media landscape today is to compare apples and carp.
Sad? Yes. But there it is. I think Thomson is exactly right about the lack of editorial empathy on the part of many who long for the "Sweetheart, get me rewrite" days.
Posted by Melissa on Wed 6 May 2009 at 12:41 PM
Clearly the WSJ's competitive advantage for years was its near-monopoly on domestic US corporate and financial news and its distribution network.
I find it hard to believe people buy the paper expecting to read several 2,000 word articles. These were written for journalists and for prize committees, not readers. The idea of a 15,000 word series on a missing millionaire is completely bonkers, good on the paper for spiking parts two and three.
Posted by James on Wed 6 May 2009 at 03:33 PM
Personally I see reduction in unique business coverage & miss it.
Examples of other "cuts": Jonathon Clements column was not replaced with something equivalent, the weekly chart of DOW PEG is gone .
The ETF & stock quotes are better in USA Today, also the quarterly Mutual Fund review.
These provide a lot of info quickly in one skim, rather than rooting around on page after page online.
Posted by susan stoll on Wed 6 May 2009 at 04:00 PM
While I agree the WSJ changes are oh so noticeable, they are noteworthy and progressive. Media hates to see media changes and one cannot expect audiences to be locked in a bell jar and not be affected by reading changes instituted by the Web, fleeting images and the digital word in general. I applaud WSJ's expansion of global coverage and its stand of objectivism and a somewhat noble defense of capitalism. I hope the text remains jewel-like and the features are kept at bay but at its worst, I still believe if put in jail for a year, I'd request a copy of the WSJ to read.
Posted by margaret durante on Wed 6 May 2009 at 04:57 PM
Ah, bullshit in defense of bullshit. Are journalism and sound thinking dead? Looks like it to me. The Journal is beginning to deliver smart, incisive reading to its subscribers . . . the primary reason it is the only serious paper growing its circulation, something that Barney Kilgore was dedicated to when he transformed the one-section wall-street-oriented WSJ into the first true national business paper.
Posted by bill O on Wed 6 May 2009 at 06:31 PM
Actually, it seems to me the WSJ is moving more toward what it was under Kilgore. Writing was tight then, stories were short (for a while there was a mandate that ledes should be no more than 15 words), and, yes, WSJ reporters also filed for the ticker ... that era's Newswire.
The Page One leders and A-hed were about the only long-form stories in the paper, and reporters were, I believe, expected to produce two Page One stories a year, in addition to covering their beats.
What was distinctive abouot Kilgore's Journal wan't that stories didn't need to say "yesterday" -- in fact, they couldn't say yesterday because the paper often took two days to reach readers -- but (1) it was written to be read, as Kilgore liked to say, "by the little old lady in tennis shoes in Dubuque," and (2) it was edited on the assumption that the businessman in Chicago was as interested as the businessman in Pittsburgh on developments in the steel business, and the businessman in New Orleans was as interested in what the New York bankers were doing as was the businessman in New Jersey.
That having been said, Kilgore would not have supported eliminating the copy desk. Just as reporters became bureau chiefs, copy editors became news editors, Page One rewritemen, etc. That's because reporters knew how to gather and write news, while the copyeditors were the ones who knew how to get it into print, quickly, efficiently and accurately.
Posted by Joel Whitaker on Wed 6 May 2009 at 09:43 PM
Murdoch has turned the Journal in USA Today.
Gone is in depth reporting. Murdoch confuses the concept of urgency with importance. Breaking news has a sense of time urgency. But rarely is the most important news the most time sensitive.
Imagine if history and text books were written with the same emphasis on brevity, and lack of depth and nuance.
Posted by Daniel N Bloom on Tue 19 May 2009 at 04:23 PM
Long thoughtful articles are nice now and then, but Thompson is right. It's a news paper and news happens daily. Perhaps if the Bancroft owned Journal had been less indulgent with its onanistic journalists, Bloomberg wouldn't have come along and stolen Dow Jones' market.
Posted by Leonard Crook on Mon 8 Jun 2009 at 12:52 PM
I agree with joey that this journal is perhaps the most impartial and not influence news reporting in the country prsesently.
perfect golf swing
fat loss 4 idiots
Posted by Andy on Wed 1 Jul 2009 at 02:02 PM
That's because reporters knew how to gather and write news, while the copyeditors were the ones who knew how to get it into print, quickly, efficiently and accurately.Google
Posted by Google on Tue 4 Aug 2009 at 02:45 AM