Monk

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Rupert Murdock has yet to put the Wall Street Journal officially under his name, but even at seventy-six years of age, he is still a hard-driving, take charge kind of business guy. And he is definitely gunning for the New York Times, bringing the Fox-CNN rivalry to the big newspaper game.

( article )

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People will bemoan what Murdoch does to the Journal, no matter what it is. They will say that he is killing a great newspaper. But the sad part of this story is that "the empire," as we reporters once liked to call it, was already dying -- and that so many of its wounds were self-inflicted.

-- David Ignatius for The Washington Post

Rupert Murdoch got the Wall Street Journal, confirming definitively that he is a man who gets what he wants. There were reports of a snag and struggle not long before the deal was closed, and one can only imagine what pressures were applied, but the big man won.

David Ignatius used to report for that paper, and he has an interesting account of some of the history, pointing out that the Journal had been getting more ideologically opinionated since the mid-eighties, suggesting that Murdoch may not be so much a revolutionary change but one just bringing a tragic-drama to its natural conclusion.

And just like we have CNN and Fox News, now we have The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It would seem that we have become more polarized and less given to the idealism of a pure objectivity. Let the debates go on and long live democracy!

( Ignatius )

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Rupert Murdoch's bid to attain The Wall Street Journal is going full steam ahead and seems to be all but a done deal. Paul Krugman has some choice words about this prospect.

( Krugman column )

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