Guest blogger Paul Talbot responds to guest blogger Bill Grimes about the Wall Street Journal.
Despite its efforts to contemporize, the Journal’s editorial position remains lodged in 1792 or 1926. The ghosts of Andrew Hamilton and Calvin Coolidge float off every page. Fortunately, the paper publishes one fine editorial each year, which, hopefully, we’ll be able to read once again this coming Wednesday.
The focus group-spawned efforts to contemporize the WSJ are reminiscent of Frank Sinatra circa 1967, sliding into a lemon-colored Nehru jacket and brushing what was left of his hair down over his forehead. Just not happening.
A piece on Heidi Klum back on the catwalk? Seems as if there’s a bit of TMZ envy at the WSJ.
As we consider the expanded collection of stories the WSJ does publish, let’s consider the stories it does not publish. Which backwaters of America it has no interest in. Which shibboleths of conservatism and business go largely unexamined.
Would the Journal’s editorial content be stronger without the broken-down parade of disgruntled supply-siders in search of redemption and relevance? Can we get the hook for these sad attempts to prop up Sarah Palin?
Unfortunately, the Journal’s makeover, certainly costlier than Ms. Palin’s, doesn’t seem to have softened the shrill tone of the paper, which is largely lacking in compassion and remains dismissive of human frailties.
So you’re a 28 year-old single mom working nights at an Arby’s in Jackson, Mississippi and you’re strangled with credit card debt because you bought that Samsung 46” LCD HDTV at Wal-Mart? Well, tough luck, you should have known better. Instead of watching Mo-Nique on BET you should be reading Benjamin Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor.” And don’t worry about usury laws, the free market will sort out your interest payments. Just keep your job and save your money.
Of course, the Journal is an essential, credible, exemplary, ingredient both in the American discourse and American journalism.
But it needs to proceed with caution. Headlining a collection of pieces of health care issues under the umbrella “ObamaCare” is pejorative, inaccurate, and cutesy. There is no need for the Journal to squander its credibility with these kinds of tawdry Murdoch tabloid trappings.
And Heidi Klum and Calvin Coolidge make for strange content bedfellows.

Enough of the Bancroft family, the members of which own 52 percent of the voting stock of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal, will vote to sell a controlling interest to Rupert Murdoch’s New Corp. by the end of this year.
I’m betting that Murdoch will sweeten and restructure the deal. He’s offered about $5 billion, or $64 per share, which is a big premium over the current stock price of $53.31, which is a huge jump over $36.28 as of May 1, when Murdoch made his offer. He’ll offer more and structure the deal so that the Bancrofts don’t get cash, but get a piece of News Corp. or a separate tracking stock of a new Dow Jones & Company (a smart lawyer friend of mine suggested this would be the best move).
With this kind of a deal, the Bancrofts wouldn’t have to pay capital gains taxes and would get around $5 billion in stock in a company that is sure to grow a lot more than the current Dow Jones & Company stock, which is mired deep in the mud. Poor management has stalled the company and its crown jewel, the Wall Street Journal.
The Bancrofts are absentee owners and have been living grandly off of money coming from a declining asset. They may not be too swift, but I doubt that all of the members of the family are so dumb that they don’t see the writing on the wall. They’ll sell by the end of the year.
And when Murdoch takes control of the Wall Street Journal, will he change it? I think the changes will be so minor that the average reader won’t notice it. If I’m wrong on either count, I’ll buy you lunch.

Rupert Murdoch, on behalf of his News Corporation, bid $5 billion for the Dow Jones & Company, which owns the Wall Street Journal.
The press and the blogsphere have been going nuts with speculation: Is the Murdoch bid a good or a bad thing for journalism? What will a Murdoch Wall Street Journal look like if the Bancroft family, who own a majority of the Dow Jones voting stock, agree to sell? If the Bancrofts don’t sell, will Murdoch go away?
The last question first: No, Murdock and the News Corporation’s bid will not go away. Murdoch is the most brilliant corporate media strategist in the world and he knows exactly what he is doing. He’s as patient as he is smart; so he’ll wait. Even though many members of the family don’t want to sell to Murdoch as a matter of pride and many WSJ employees are terrified that their big-J Journalism integrity and independence will be compromised by selling to Murdoch, my advice to them is, “Get over it.”
The second question: A Murdoch Wall Street Journal newspaper (you know, that thing that kids call a “dinosaur blog”) will look and read virtually the same as the newspaper is now. It will probably have more resources and foreign bureaus. Murdoch is not only smart, he’s a long-term thinker. He’ll expand the WSJ’s reach globally slowly, prudently, and relentlessly. Murdoch has proven with his purchase of MySpace and SkyTV that he’s a visionary—he sees profit potential far into the future.
There are many things Murdoch can do when he controls the WSJ: First, he can combine some non-journalistic functions such as circulation, accounting, HR, etc. with the New York Post. The Post is losing about $40 million a year and by combing appropriate functions he can save money at both operations, or he could sell the Post and stop the bleeding. Next, he can not only eventually give an enormous boost to the credibility and resources of his new Fox Business Channel but also hurt its biggest competitor, CNBC, which has a partnership with the WSJ—a perfect double whammy (Dow Jones has a contract with CNBC that runs until 2012, but Murdoch can wait or afford to buy CNBC out.)
Third, Murdoch can improve the WSJ’s website dramatically and make it much more profitable and do some effective cross promoting among WSJ Online, My Space, Fox News, the soon-to-be-launched Fox Business News, and MarketWatch.com, which is one of the most highly trafficked financial websites and which Down Jones owns.
Next, cross-platform selling is beginning to take off and News Corporation would have an awesome number of brand-name, high-traffic, big-audience assets to bundle together to sell advertisers and their agencies who are eager for cross-platform deals in order to cut down the time-consuming complexity of buying advertising in a fragmented media environment.
The final question I asked: Is the Murdoch bid a good or a bad thing for journalism? But this elicits another question, “what is journalism today?” I remember when the legendary CBS News correspondent, Eric Sevareid, gave a speech in which he said, “I don’t know if I’m in the news business or the business of news.” The speech was in the 1960s, long before the fateful summer of 1986 when Larry Tish bought CBS and GE bought NBC and both new owners dictated that the news divisions had to make a profit, an unthinkable concept before that time. After 1986, there were no more doubts that news was a public trust; it was a business that had to make a profit.
Journalists who think that being a business—making a profit—doesn’t come first, especially in public companies, are living in the 1960s. Grow up, get used to it. Murdoch’s $60-per-share offer is a whopping 15 times estimated 2007 earnings, which is much higher than the average 8 to 10 times valuation for newspaper companies, according to Media Daily News.
The Bancroft family is not involved in running the WSJ anymore and they are out of touch with reality if they think anyone else will buy the company for anything near what Murdoch will pay. Eventually the family will come to the realization that newspaper stock prices are declining rapidly and that they better take Murdoch’s offer before the company is worth a quarter of what he’s offering.
No company but News Corporation has the assets that have such a good strategic fit and as many possibilities as News Corp. No one else will be nuts enough (or smart enough) to pay $5 billion dollars. The Bancroft’s will take the money and run eventually. If they are smart, they’ll take cash and News Corp. stock, which will appreciate. My advice to the journalists at the WSJ who are whining: Buy News Corp. stock, that way you’ll do well no matter what happens.