Limited News rather than News Limited?

It’s very emotive, or thinks it is: “make no mistake: this is the end of Dow Jones” it bellows. Then it goes to say “there is no way - no way - that the Bancroft family, which controls the majority of voting shares, can resist a $60 offer - a 67 per cent premium to the recent market price of DJ shares”.

So what is it exactly? Is Murdoch stealing the Journal? Hardly, given the hearty premium that he is offering. Or is he merely replacing the Bancroft managerial style with his own? Yes. And if an owner can’t have his views expressed in his paper, whose views are to be expressed? Some reporter who has a bee in his bonnet about some issue?

In 1980, Slate claims, Ansett Airlines owned in part by News Corp. applied for a US$290 million loan from the federal Export-Import Bank of the United States. The loan request was made over a White House lunch between Mr Murdoch and Jimmy Carter, the American President who let his countrymen rot for 444 days in Teheran. Three days after that lunch, Murdoch's New York Post endorsed Mr Carter in the Democratic primary. Four days later, Rupert’s loan was approved. As a tail piece, Slate notes - teeth clenched no doubt - that a congressional investigation found no impropriety. None.

While the New York Times and the Washington Post relish the roles of fashioning Murdoch’s coffin, the facts are: first the Journal is not yet in Murdoch’s hands, and second, the Journal (after his acquisition) will not fail. Like all bright proprietors, Mr Murdoch will not let his politics pollute his commercial interests.

Rupert's Wall Street Journal will be greeted by readers no doubt with an open mind. Readers will be aware of the stellar reputation that Murdoch has purchased, and will long for continuity of that tradition.

To keep subscribers subscribing and to entice new ones, the bright, worldly and sophisticated readership will insist on maintenance of excellence in the Journal’s output of news and opinion. It is arguably Rupert Murdoch’s capacity to deliver readers what they value that really terrifies the embittered snipers at the Times and the Post.

After all, if Murdoch succeeds in dumbing down his Journal and elbowing his editors, the paper will in short order fail, and rivals will be able to make inroads into that niche. Not least the Financial Times, who could easily scoop up journalists to help bolster its daily US sales from 140,000 to something approaching the two million that the Journal moves.

But if Murdoch succeeds in maintaining the excellence of the Journal, outwits and outplays the competition, then the losers will be not only CNBC whose data feed from the Journal will come to a grinding halt, but also the Times and the Post who will see their share of financial reporting reduced to a bare rump of what it currently is.

After all, if the Journal will feed its financial data to say the embryonic Fox Business Channel as well as to its sister, the New York Post, then really what use will anyone have for the Times’ and the Washington Post’s business pages? Apart from lining bird cages that is? Let’s face it. If you’re say a pensioner, seeking financial data, why would you pay US$1.00 for the Times when better data will be available for US$0.25 in the New York Post? And if you’ll subscribe to Fox Business Channel, who knows? Maybe Rupert will offer you a deep discount to subscribe to his Journal?

Rupert Murdoch like all media moguls has a track record. But on balance his influence has been positive: apart from the occasional lapse, such as his support for one E.G. Whitlam. But let’s not dwell on his (Rupert’s) youthful exuberance.

And that lapse is a walk on the beach when compared to The New York Times monumental failure in say, its coverage of the fate of European Jews in World War II. Laurel Leff, a veteran journalist and professor of journalism, recounts how personal relationships at the Times resulted in the minimising and misunderstanding of modern history's worst genocide. Leff’s book, Buried by the Times (published in August 2006) recalls how news of Hitler's “final solution” was hidden from readers and - because of The New York Times' influence on other media - from America at large.

Proprietors have always, legitimately, had their hands on the levers of their media assets. Some more than others. Antagonism by the leftist media to Murdoch is not due to his identification as a surrogate for News Corp, nor is the frustration merely a function of his political views. Rather the left’s odium is a product of his demonstrated commercial success whilst pursuing his conservative values. The very two things the leftist media resents most.

Rupert's Wall Street Journal has been long in coming. Let’s welcome it to the nearest news agent - with both an open wallet as well as an open mind.