Murdoch vs. the New York Times

[DeepModem Mom]

Portfolio: Murdoch vs. the Times
by Howell Raines
April 2008 Issue



Pirates can be charming, which is a good thing to remember in pondering the business plans of Rupert Murdoch. My only conversation with the pirate king took place in 2002 in, of all places, an executive retreat for top editors of the New York Times.

We had a conversation there that I've been carrying around like a hot rock ever since. As the paper's executive editor at that time, I was eager to hear Murdoch's critique of Escapes, our new lifestyle section. We had rushed Escapes into print to steal thunder from the debut of the Wall Street Journal's ballyhooed Personal Journal section.

Murdoch allowed that Escapes was all right as an attempt to thwart the Journal's targeting of young professional women, a key readership group for the Times. Then he added some advice about how to conduct a newspaper war: "You ought to hit them where they live," he said of the Journal. "Go after hard business news and beat them on their strength."

I can't shake the memory because it seems obvious to me that Murdoch now plans to do to the Times what he was advising me to do to the Journal. He will spend whatever it takes to undermine the Times' standing as America's leading general-interest newspaper. But my real fear is that Murdoch or some other unsuitable purchaser will then buy the Times through a combination of financial and psychological pressures on the strong, but hardly ironclad, Sulzberger family trust that controls the vast majority of the company's voting stock. There is no more important question in American journalism than the future of the Times, and I don't think the newspaper or the journalistic profession is taking Murdoch in particular or the takeover issue in general seriously enough....

***

Murdoch, jolly pirate that he is, reportedly sent Sulzberger a handwritten note after buying the Journal. "Let the war begin," it said. Since then, Murdoch has targeted three Times strengths—foreign news, the Washington/politics report, and the Sunday magazine—and suggested he'd invest heavily to beat its news sections. You could call it hitting them where they live. I hope the Times has battle plans to which I'm no longer privy, but from the outside, their response to Murdoch's trumpeting seems way too relaxed....

***

For now, the thing to watch is the newspaper war promised by Murdoch. If his heavy spending on the Journal has the side effect of further depressing Times stock, a lot of (Sulzberger) cousins could start looking over their shoulders and fingering their calculators.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/2008/03/17/Howell-Raines-on-Rupert-Murdoch

[movonne]

1. Murdock is a scourge on the U.S.. and the rest of the world....these

are the people we must get rid of....

[WouldBe Speechwriter]

2. It takes so much effort to slant the news, what's the payoff?

I really wonder WHY Murdoch and his news outlets are so FIXated on manipulating the story. Why have an agenda? The business community has it's concerns over regulations and taxes, but is that really why all this effort is made to slant the story then ram it home through all the radio/tv/papers? I'm not being naive. I want to get at the psychology that has no use for the truth.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Murdoch is a conservative, and I understand his use of Fox TV News...

to advance conservatism. I don't really understand why he's obssessed with destroying an American institution, the New York Times. (And remember he is an Australian, who took American citizenship for business reasons only.) Power crazed, I guess.