Murdoch, Dow Jones, and the Future of Newspapers

Here are some shorthand thoughts. More thoughtful editing to come a bit later.

Rupert Murdoch has come to an agreement to acquire Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. Except for those windbags on the editorial page, the Journal is a good newspaper.

Murdoch is an interesting man, and it's interesting to see skeptics (myself included) who hate his Fox News Channel wonder if Murdoch might just set out to keep the national newspaper relevant. If he follows through on his promises to invest in making the Journal relevant to the 21st century, that is not a bad thing for those of us who love good newspapers.

Read Ken Auletta's great profile of Murdoch from last year's New Yorker. The titan comes off a much more interested in power and influence than ideology, which goes against prevailing Fox-News-Hating wisdom. (I respected him more after reading this, beware).

What does this mean for The New York Times, arguably the closest competitor to the Journal? I hate to say it, but the current Sulzberger in charge of overseeing the Times has not been the most visionary leader (his online strategy is downright odd, for instance), and shareholders are not happy. Murdoch and the Journal will put even more pressure on the beloved Times to serve their shareholders (not just their readers, unfortunately). Let's hope that the Sulzbergers have some tricks up their sleves to preserve the independence of the Times.

With the exception of the Journal, The Times and perhaps USA Today, just about every other newspaper in the US is screwed, as they are rapidly declining businesses with readers and advertisers abandoning them for the web. What will the Journal, The Times, USA TODAY look like as national voices in 10 years? What will smaller, less distinguished papers like the San Francisco Chronicle look like?