Put your ideological preferences aside. And never mind that the New York Times's coverage of its home city is almost certain to remain stronger than that of the Wall Street Journal's just-unveiled New York section. The reality is that Rupert Murdoch seems destined to come out ahead in what has been called "the last great newspaper war of the 20th century".
The key to understanding the stakes is to look at what executives at each paper are trying to accomplish.
At the Times, the goal is to hang on to the diminishing paid print circulation without necessarily worrying all that much about what else their customers might be reading.
Matters are quite different at Murdoch's Journal. There, the aim is to inflict as much damage on the Times as possible by getting New Yorkers who are already Journal subscribers to drop the Times and become one-newspaper customers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/26/rupert-murdoch-new-york-wall-street