Has the 'Journal' Lost Its Soul? (Page 4)

One striking consequence of the meltdown of the US newspaper industry has been the semi-rehabilitation of Rupert Murdoch. A boogeyman who was vilified for attempting to purchase Dow Jones is being extolled for his commitment to ink, paper, printing presses and a well-staffed newsroom. Talking to people about Murdoch's Journal, one hears countless variations on this theme: "Well, at least Rupert's investing in it..." The Media Baron Who Loves Print was the headline of a recent New York Times article about the Australian press lord. Journal spokesman Robert Christie puts it this way: "He's largely viewed, whether you like him or not, as someone who has invested in and is saving the paper."

Perhaps so. But admirers of the Journal should not overlook what has been lost or ignore Murdoch's heavy hand. In early 2008 he forced out the paper's well-regarded editor, Marcus Brauchli, in a way that circumvented a "special committee" established as a condition of the sale of Dow Jones to News Corp. Part of the committee's mandate was to preserve the Journal's editorial independence, for which it was given "rights of approval" on the hiring and firing of the managing editor. But Murdoch ignored the committee (whose members received annual salaries of $100,000) and, in the words of Slate press critic Jack Shafer, reduced its members to "a set of high-paid flunkies."

Brauchli, now executive editor of the Washington Post, was replaced by Thomson, the US managing editor of the Financial Times before he took over the Times of London. In public Thomson is quick to praise his boss: "Rupert is passionate about newspapers; he's passionate about news," he told a group of journalism students in 2008. "What we are experiencing at the Wall Street Journal is the articulation of that passion."

First-rate editors not only praise their publishers in public but challenge them behind closed doors. Is Thomson strong and confident enough to challenge Murdoch? On that score, Journal watchers are not optimistic. "I don't think there is any possibility that Thomson will stand up to Murdoch on any major issue," says former Journal executive editor Fred Taylor. "That's why he's in that job." Time will tell if Thomson, like his predecessors Taylor, Norman Pearlstine and Paul Steiger, is interested in stories with "moral force," or if he is merely Murdoch's caretaker and custodian.

Some staffers were jolted by Thomson's announcement, in November, that the paper's new deputy editor in chief would be Gerard Baker, a veteran of the BBC, the Financial Times and the Times of London, where he served, most recently, as US editor and (conservative) columnist. Writing in the Times of London on November 7, Baker lamented, "An Obama administration and a solidly Democratic Congress represent the most significant and unwelcome leftward tilt in American politics in at least a generation." Some Journal staff have circulated, with amusement and dismay, a YouTube clip originating from Fox News, in which Baker offers a puerile commentary on the candidacy of Barack Obama. Says one staffer with a sigh: "It seems doubtful they conducted an exhaustive nationwide search to find the best qualified candidate for the number-two job in the Journal's newsroom. What does it tell you that someone like Baker was appointed?"

Overt bias in the Journal's news columns has been rare. But a handful of recent ledes and headlines raise eyebrows. Consider the opening sentence of the paper's Page 1 story on January 29, concerning the stimulus package: "The House passed an $819 billion tax-and-spending bill Wednesday..." Or this Page 1 headline from February 26: $318 Billion Tax Hit Proposed. (The New York Times, in contrast, chose the headline Obama to Call for Higher Tax on Top Earners.) If Paul Steiger or Marcus Brauchli were still at the helm of the Journal, no one would fret about bias in the news columns. However, a fundamental question remains about the new regime: are Murdoch, Thomson and Baker truly committed to the old model of unbiased news reporting, or might they be tempted to embrace a more politicized, pugnacious and populist version of the news?

"I'm a little puzzled by the Journal's evolving identity," Times executive editor Bill Keller told me in an e-mail. "Some days the front page is mostly general-interest news, like a cross between the Times and USA Today. Then the next day you get a front like today [March 12], when the lead story ("EBay Retreats in Web Retailing") is clearly aimed at core business readers. Some days the tone is FT (a top-of-the-page curtain raiser on the G-20 summit); some days it is tabloid populist (lashing the million-dollar-bonus recipients at Merrill). If the paper has made up its mind what it wants to be, it's not clear to me. Maybe they hope we'll all keep reading just to see how they resolve their identity crisis."

Journal staffers, too, are uncertain about the paper's overall direction. "Because of the election and the financial crisis, and the daily crush of big, breaking news, the last six months were not typical," says one reporter. "The test will come when all that settles down, when we have a less tumultuous news cycle. At that point we'll see how things shake out." A former reporter, sounding like Eugene Roberts circa 2008, is more bitingly cynical: "This country will soon have two USA Todays and one New York Times." (Some of the bloated color graphics that have recently appeared in the Journal do call to mind USA Today or the New York Post.) But the prevailing sentiment among Journal staff is relief that, at a time when thousands of newspaper jobs have been liquidated, they are still employed. Says one Journal reporter: "Is it better to be on a sinking ship, or one that's been captured by pirates? While other newspapers are going down, for now we're still afloat."

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