And:

Journal readers surely want insiderism more than outsiderism. They want a knowledgeable reflection of the prevailing business winds. (Dean Starkman, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, went so far as to argue that the Journal’s mission is to be a watchdog of the capital markets instead of, in fact, their handmaiden, the paper’s historic role.) To the degree The Wall Street Journal is supposed to reflect the business establishment—and that is, surely, what the paper is supposed to do—it could, in Murdoch, hardly have a better owner.

He’s wrong about the liveliness of Murdoch’s stuff. Even the New York Post lost its headline magic long ago. And to dismiss the Journal as capital’s spear-carrier is facile, at best. But he’s right in one sense: the fewer sparkling stories you do, and the more run-of-the-mill corporate ones, the more people will see the paper Wolff’s way.

Fact is, Journal readers are no different from any others. They want great stories. And that’s what the Dow Jones affair is about.

Take a longer view and look at the paper for what it has been, still occasionally is, and could be again if given a few years to get clear of the un-Murdochs who’ve been managing the place under an unimaginative board of undertakers, er, directors. Steve Yount, the head of the union that represents the paper’s employees and a newscaster for the WSJ Radio Network makes a nifty case that Murdoch is buying low. Long overdue changes on the editorial side had just been put in place when the News Corp. bid became public.

Insiders and elite snobs such as myself are on the edge of despair because we know too well the bureaucratic barriers—the fear, the loathing, etc.—that are already rooted in newspapers. We know why newspapers read like they are produced by terrified bureaucracies. Because they are.

Great is an overused word, but Great Stories, when they do happen, are almost mini-miracles. They require talented, forceful and occasionally odd individuals operating in an environment where they feel they are, more or less, free to do what they do. News Corp. is a big, important company with diverse goals— the China market, TV regulation, Hollywood. Murdoch has shown, if nothing else, a devotion to those goals and a willingness to sack editors, kill books, even the drop whole news organizations to help achieve them. That’s ok with me, in the end. That’s News Corp.’s business, and it works for shareholders.

But I don’t see how it works for readers or how an already anxious staff of reporters and editors on a business-and-finance newspaper operates in that context. If you want great stories, you need money, yes. But, much more important, there has to be breathing room. Look what McClatchy’s Washington bureau does with a few dozen people. Newsrooms need to feel free enough to write about otters [6], an eight-year-old leukemia patient, inner-city kids trying to get into M.I.T, and a pharmacist’s experience after a robbery.

Or absinthe, which we learn was invented in 1792 by French pharmacist Pierre Ordinaire.

With a disposable lighter, Mr. Hudson lights the spoons. As the alcohol burns off, he drips tiny balls of flaming sugar into his glass of absinthe. “You have to do it slowly. Otherwise, the glass catches on fire,” he says. He claims the technique increases absinthe’s hallucinatory power by raising its temperature.
Suddenly, trouble strikes. The reporter pours in the flaming sugar too quickly. His glass ignites. He tries to cover the glass with his hand to extinguish the fire. But it is hot, he pulls back, and the rim of the glass, covered with sugar, sticks to his palm. As he shakes it off, the glass spills. The table and his hand become covered in a beautiful blue flame. “I’ve never seen that before,” Mr. Gray says, as he removes his sweater to douse the budding conflagration. (7)

Or about how major tobacco producers use ammonia to hook smokers, published in the face of vehement denials by what was then still known as Big Tobacco.

Leading U.S. tobacco companies enhance nicotine delivery to smokers by adding ammonia-based compounds to their cigarettes, according to two major internal reports by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.

The $45 billion tobacco industry vehemently denies that it seeks to keep smokers hooked by increasing nicotine levels in cigarettes. But the confidential reports obtained by this newspaper indicate that, while cigarette makers may not bolster nicotine content per se, most are adding chemicals that increase the potency of the nicotine a smoker actually inhales. (8)

Or whether the U.S. bombed the right target:

Some U.S. allies and Washington officials still doubt the U.S. hit a legitimate target, and the full truth of El Shifa, wrapped in the divisive politics of antiterrorism, may never be known. The hardest evidence is a scoop of soil, taken near the plant and judged by the U.S. to contain a chemical used to make nerve gas. But other evidence becomes murkier the closer you look.(9)

Or about the state murder in China of Chen ZiXiu:

The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head.

Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness, and died on Feb. 21. (10)