Indeed, as the CEO of a global conglomerate, Murdoch has a global sensibility, and is already making the Journal a far more international paper. He has let Robert Thomson invest $6 million in foreign coverage. At a time when other newspapers’ coverage of the world outside the U.S. is declining, Thomson says, the Journal can attract readers by providing foreign news. And some of the recent foreign coverage has been top-notch. A remarkable March 18 story, for example, on how Iranian imports have devastated the Iraqi economy, focused with illuminating specificity on how the U.S. occupation, with its consequent erratic fuel and electricity supplies, had undercut the famously sturdy quality of Iraqi bricks.

Another bright spot at the new Journal is its Web site, which is more readable and relevant than before. Many of the blogs have a strong following, and it’s easy to see why—one tracks out-of-work mbas in their quest to rebuild their lives; it offers readers the gossipy schadenfreude of seeing privileged people struggling, but also insight into the psychology of unemployment and the practicalities of the job search. Mostly, however, the site is a dependable source of breaking news. Readership of wsj.com, Thomson says, has been up at least 84 percent year-on-year in recent months, with more than a million paid subscribers and 23 million unique visitors a month. (Nielsen Online counts just 6.8 million unique visitors, however.)

Murdoch and Thomson clearly love newspapers, and are working hard to make the Journal viable. At a time when most newspapers are either hemorrhaging readers, or folding altogether, the Journal’s readership has increased. Even sales of the print newspaper rose 2 to 3 percent over the past year, according to Thomson, although this growth must be qualified a bit, given the heavily discounted subscriptions the Journal was selling before September, and given the fact that many financial-news outlets are gaining readers during these difficult days. Furthermore, the entire move-the-needle case should be considered in the context of the $8.4 billion in write-downs that News Corp. recently took, $3 billion of them in the print division. Still, Thomson insists that “the decline of once-great papers doesn’t mean the readers are disappearing.” He’s got evidence to support his bullish position. In a March 23 memo, Thomson cited a reader-tracking survey that had been in use at the Journal for years, remarking, “Former subscribers are now twice as likely to resubscribe. There is no doubt that revenue remains challenged, but there is a large and growing audience for our content.”

Central to this move-the-needle strategy is the elevation of breaking news above the more considered coverage that has long been the Journal’s trademark. It’s a controversial move within the paper. Theo Francis, a former Journal reporter who left last summer for Business Week, observes, “There’s been this creeping tendency for the paper to be about what happened yesterday, rather than telling people about things they didn’t know, and would never know if the Journal didn’t tell them.” Francis and others note, in fairness, that this trend predates Murdoch, but there’s no doubt it has escalated under his leadership. On March 19, Thomson sent a memo to the staff urging more cooperation with the company’s newswires: “A breaking corporate, economic or political news story is of crucial value to our Newswires subscribers. Even a headstart of a few seconds is priceless for a commodities trader or bond dealer—that same story can be repurposed for different audiences but its value diminishes with the passing of time. Given that revenue reality, henceforth all Journal reporters will be judged on whether they break news for the Newswires.”

Liza Featherstone is a regular contributor to Slate's The Big Money Web site, and the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart.