A Running Commentary

Say what you will about Rupert Murdoch. He is arrogant. He is too powerful. He has a lot of money that would surely be spent more admirably by Microsoft-free Bill Gates. By I have to hand it to him; he was right about The Wall Street Journal.

Many people shuddered when ol’ Rupert made his bid to buy The Journal’s publisher Dow Jones (me included). We already have an absurd amount of media conglomeration in this country, and not just with news outlets. George W. Bush’s tight relationship with the Mays family, for example, further exacerbated the laughable state of American radio set in motion by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Clear Channel’s overbroad ownership of 30%+ of all radio stations mocks the notion that the FCC is protects local airwaves for the citizenry. Apparently if you give enough to the ruling party, you’re corporate monster can gobble up whatever it wants and merge radio, TV, and advertising to its heart’s content.

All of that said, I have to admit Murdoch knew what he was doing with The Wall Street Journal. It is way better now as head-on competitor to The NY Times than it ever was a purely haughty financial paper. In fact, less some of the more elaborate sections on living, food, etc that I rarely read anyway, The Journal is every bit the daily general-interest news paper as The Times, sans the bleeding liberal bent. I used to scan only the front page and editorials but it has now has become my personal ‘paper of record’.