At Journal, the Words Not Spoken

Back in December, Rupert Murdoch mounted a small podium made of cardboard boxes in The Journal’s newsroom and told his new employees, “I just wanted to say that we do know and understand the tremendous values of Dow Jones and particularly, of course, The Wall Street Journal, and the very high bar you have set yourselves.” Robert J. Thomson, the paper’s new publisher, spoke, and so did Leslie Hinton, the company’s new chief executive. Marcus W. Brauchli, the paper’s managing editor, went unmentioned and was left standing silently by. Editorial safeguards were rendered moot with a flick of nomenclature: it was clear the publisher could be running editorial operations. After that, Murdoch and Thomson quickly set about the work of making the newspaper’s articles shorter, its coverage broader and truncating its trademark front-page narratives. “Murdoch has always talked about how much he liked The Journal,” said one reporter who spoke last week on the condition of anonymity. “But he’s changing so much that you have to wonder what he liked.” There is certainly no evidence that Mr. Murdoch has turned the newspaper into a tool of his business or political interests — something that had been widely feared and predicted. But there are clear signs that a sui generis business paper is fast becoming a very common general-interest paper, albeit one with a really dynamite business section. Further changes were unveiled last week, but they seemed to reflect a broader range of stated interests without any additional staff or expertise. The Project for Excellence in Journalism completed a content survey last week and found that the newspaper’s front-page coverage of politics had tripled and that front-page coverage of business had been cut in half.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28carr.html?ref=todaysp...
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