Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal

By DAVID CARR
NYT

Sunday was the second anniversary of the sale of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. At that time, a chorus of journalism church ladies (I was among them) warned that one of the crown jewels of American journalism now resided in the hands of a roughneck, and predicted that he would use it to his own ends.

Yet here we are, two years later, and The Wall Street Journal still hits my doorstep every morning as one of the nation’s premier newspapers.

But under Mr. Murdoch’s leadership, the newspaper is no longer anchored by those deep dives into the boardrooms of American business with quaint stippled portraits, opting instead for a much broader template of breaking general interest news articles with a particular interest in politics and big splashy photos. Glenn R. Simpson, who left the newspaper back in March, is not a fan of the newsier, less analytical Journal.

“Murdoch didn’t ruin The Wall Street Journal; he just rendered it into a much more ordinary paper,” he said.

(More here.)