The Nation puts succinctly what the effect of The Sun King, Rupert Murdoch's take-over of the Dow Jones Company - publishers of the Wall Street Journal - means for the media, and journalism in particular, in the US. Bottom line, knowing Rupert's dubious reputation on how he "runs" his newspapers, the WSJ can be taken to have now lost whatever sheen it has held to date.
"That American journalism is facing so many crises simultaneously has the effect of immobilizing a concerted response to any of them. From the Administration's war on the press, to the relentless attention lavished on Paris and Britney, to the domination of "serious" punditocracy discourse by friends and acolytes of the discredited Bill Kristol, to the way the upstart blogosphere has all but destroyed the prestige and authority of so many of the "wise men" with aggressive fact-checking and relentless questioning, to the fact that young people are more likely to be killed by terrorists than to buy a daily newspaper subscription or turn on the evening news--there are more problems than any one person can hope to address. Meanwhile, corporate owners are demanding 20 percent profit margins every year, thereby forcing cuts in coverage and diminishing the product, giving people even less reason to read or tune in. All one can really do is press on and hope for a miracle.
Rupert Murdoch might profitably be viewed as the Frankenstein monster of this multifaceted identity crisis. Take a look at his flagship American publication: the New York Post. It's dumb, celebrity-obsessed, spineless, corrupt, unreliable and reactionary, and even with all its pandering, it still manages to lose, by its own estimation, $30 million to $50 million a year."
"That American journalism is facing so many crises simultaneously has the effect of immobilizing a concerted response to any of them. From the Administration's war on the press, to the relentless attention lavished on Paris and Britney, to the domination of "serious" punditocracy discourse by friends and acolytes of the discredited Bill Kristol, to the way the upstart blogosphere has all but destroyed the prestige and authority of so many of the "wise men" with aggressive fact-checking and relentless questioning, to the fact that young people are more likely to be killed by terrorists than to buy a daily newspaper subscription or turn on the evening news--there are more problems than any one person can hope to address. Meanwhile, corporate owners are demanding 20 percent profit margins every year, thereby forcing cuts in coverage and diminishing the product, giving people even less reason to read or tune in. All one can really do is press on and hope for a miracle.
Rupert Murdoch might profitably be viewed as the Frankenstein monster of this multifaceted identity crisis. Take a look at his flagship American publication: the New York Post. It's dumb, celebrity-obsessed, spineless, corrupt, unreliable and reactionary, and even with all its pandering, it still manages to lose, by its own estimation, $30 million to $50 million a year."
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