Joe’s “Mea Culpa” (Update)
Joe Nocera bewails, in Italianate fashion, the “Fox-ification” of the once great Wall Street Journal. He also confesses his own well-intentioned, but in hindsight, rather naive optimism in the matter.
To tell you the truth, I’m hanging my head in shame too. Four years ago, when Murdoch was battling recalcitrant members of the Bancroft family to gain control of The Journal, which he had long lusted after and which he viewed as the vehicle that would finally allow him to go head-to-head against The New York Times, I wrote several columns saying that he would be a better owner than the Bancrofts.
The Bancrofts’ history of mismanagement had made The Journal vulnerable in the first place. I thought that Murdoch’s resources would stop the financial bleeding, and that his desire for a decent legacy would keep him from destroying a great newspaper.
After the family agreed to sell to him, Elisabeth Goth, the brave Bancroft heir who had long tried to get her family to fix the company, told me, “He has a tremendous opportunity, and I don’t think he’s going to blow it.” In that same column, I wrote, “The chances of Mr. Murdoch wrecking The Journal are lower than you’d think.”
Mea culpa.
Joe’s many admirers will note that, being the liturgically correct guy that he is, he forbears intoning the triple “mea culpa” until its official inauguration with the First Sunday of Advent.
UPDATE:
Giving the Journal its say:
Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack. The measure that really matters is the market’s, and on that score Mr. Hinton was at the helm when we again became America’s largest daily.
*****
Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World’s offense—fatal, as it turned out—was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day.
The rest is here.
Continuing with the “mea culpa” theme… Murdoch published full-page apologies today in every British newspaper:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-16/murdoch-apology-in-british-papers/2797366
What Murdoch did was take an already-existing troglodyte editorial policy and infuse it into everything reported.
He simply widened the rot that was already there.
Apologies are easy, as we know. Taking action to understand and root out the causes of the failures are far more difficult, and far more rare.
Mea culpa remarkable, indeed. But the top of the column on how Murdoch has “ruined” the WSJ is even more remarkable.
Jimmy Mac –
The WSJ editorial pages have been sclerotic for as lOng as I can remember, so I wouldn’t call the editorial pages rot. They were always extreme laissez-faire. What was interesting to me was how its reporting could be so accurate, non-rhetorical and often even quite balanced. I suspect that too was a business decision — they sold more papers that way.
Indeed, the WSJ’s news pages have always been rock solid and often stellar, and their differentiation from the opinion pages was one of the great testimonies to the paper and a journalistic culture and tradition that seems to be waning.
The NYT’s incoming executive editor, Jill Abramson, excelled at the Journal.
Nicholas Clifford,
your comment reminds me of a line towards the end of “Dead Man Walking.” Sister Helen’s mother speaks a sentence softly, but it always sounds to me like: “Annunciations are frequent; incarnations are rare.”
Can any one verify that I have that right?
Fr. Imbelli — From Googleing (Googling?) that line, it seems that that is indeed the line; it also appears that it’s a quote from St. Basil of Caesarea.
The WSJ is a disappointment. But what should one expect?
The NYT is not what it used to be, either. Far from it. It didn’t take an evil capitalist to mess that up. There are reminders everywhere that we live in post-literate times.
One thing yoou can give Murdoch — he has tried to keep his newspapers going. It’s how he’s done it that’s bad.
Which leaves us with the questions: Are the rest of us obliged to continue supporting the papers? Must we subscribe to the NYT online? What do papers do that TV doesn’t or can’tdo? Is there an alternative?
Does it boil down to: why don’t people read?
Our Local Fox News outlet (as well as the WDJ) want to assure us they are untainted. Hmmm….
Meanwhile, our Ms. Brooks has been arrested, The Tablet is asking the vatican to return the big bucks Mr. Murdoch paid for a “private” meeting with BXVI.
And so it goes…. the story wil continue to have more legs….and stinkiness abounds in the world of Murdoch and his acolytes.
Ann(7/17 11:33 am):
“Must”? “We”?
I hope those are rhetorical questions :O)
There isn’t much to read in the way of newspapers. The Times and the Journal still have some substance, but not an overabundance. Is it true that people don’t read? Or is it that they don’t read things that take both time and thought? I’d guess they read things that take time (popular novels, the sports pages) and things that take thought (op-ed stuff) but perhaps most often not both.
And now the head of Scotland Yard has resigned! Can Cameron be far behind? I fear England may fall before the Murdoch Empire does.
Civil servants are expendable. As always with these scandals, far more is being made of this than it warrants, to please the barking dogs.
Les tricoteuses.
Peggy,
I’m not familiar with the British system, but the BBC says he’s “Metropolitan Police Commissioner.” That sounds different from “Scotland Yard” — or not?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14180043
Got the answer from (where else?): The New York Times –
“The Metropolitan Police, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, has come under harsh scrutiny in recent days, accused in the press and by British politicians of currying too close a relationship with tabloid executives. “
It may be disgraced, but Scotland Yard is as clever as ever. Ms. Brooks was arrested “by appointment”. She had an appointment, she thought, to talk with them. When she arrived she was arrested.
I read the Nocera column with interest. There has been a school of thought within journalistic circles that Murdoch is good for journalism because he is willing to invest in it. I have sympathy for the newspaper journalists who bought into this notion out of their desperation for some stability, but I never believed it.
As if in response to the WSJ comment above, David Carr in the morning’s (Monday) Times looks at the “Troubles that Money Can’t Dispel.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/media/for-news-corporation-troubles-that-money-cant-dispel.html?_r=1&hp
Their Master’s Voice: Fox News Sugercoats News Corp Phone Hacking, Condemns Media For ‘Piling On’ http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/fox_news_forgives_news_corp_phone_hacking_condemns.php?ref=fpb
What else would one expect from Fox Prtopaganda???
Of course the true believers who only get their news from their will rush to the defense.
The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both national outlets, are getting attention as Murdoch’s babies in America. At this point, I suppose, the New York Post has been Murdochized so long that no one thinks of it. It has been a general blight on New York City, however, ugly, vulgar, and mean.
I guess I’ve taken leave of newspapers. My “news” comes almost entirely from the web, in bits and pieces, from various sources. If newspapers are empty of content and sometimes full of mean, I suppose that’s echoing the popular culture, which seems to have become particularly loud and grubby lately.
The good thing is that one can now read anything at anytime; the bad is that one is almost never tempted to read anything local. Each individual is better off, but the community suffers.
James Taranto on Joe Nocera’s criticism of the WSJ
Who’s ‘Fox-ified’?
“New York Times columnist takes aim at the competition, ends up shooting blanks”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576453973320218648.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
James Taranto really proved that the Journal rarely uses “Democrat” as an adjective and that Media Matters hasn’t mentioned any instances of Fox News doing same.
Thanks for the update. Defensive, of course, but not bad.
Forget the pieman and Mrs. Murdoch.
Despite the pR, Rupert’s acceptance of responsibility doesn’t mean anything – I know he’s old, but so many don’t knows, etc, sounded like a well schooled subject (maybe even a bishop or two.)
Ot would be good if folks couls lok at the issue through an ethical non partisan frame – but is that posible in this day and age????
BTW, Tina Brown has a good take on this at NPR’s Morning Edition today.