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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (231626)	12/14/2007 12:19:43 PM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 793859

Pondering Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal BY RICHARD J. DALTON JR newsday.com December 13, 2007 The owner of TV's graphics-rich, fast-paced Fox News Channel could transform the staid Wall Street Journal into a paper with shorter pieces and eye-catching graphics while also expanding its coverage of hard news and politics, experts said. Shareholders of Dow Jones & Co., the Journal's owner, are expected today to approve the sale of the company to News Corp., run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch already has begun working at Dow Jones' headquarters, and executives may begin departing today. Concerned that Murdoch would exploit the paper to promote his business interests, Dow Jones reached an agreement with News Corp. to "no hidden agendas in any journalist undertakings" and to delegate the hiring and firing of the editorial page editor and the managing editor to a special committee of five independent community and journalistic leaders. But Murdoch will certainly have his imprint on one of the crown jewels of journalism, experts said. Former journalist Alan Mutter, in his blog Newsosaur, said having a natural-born entrepreneur take the helm should bring some much-needed change to the paper. "With luck, more changes than not will be for the better," he wrote. Paul Levinson, chairman of the communication and media studies department at Fordham University, said the Journal could begin to look like USA Today, featuring shorter articles, more pictures, graphics and human interest stories. "What he will be hoping to do is to attract the television and Internet generations, who are reading less and less newspapers anyway, but who are interested in business," Levinson said. "Right now The Wall Street Journal has almost a Victorian, New Yorker, magazine flavor to it," Levinson said. "That's like nothing that Murdoch does." Steve Cohn, editor in chief of Media Industry Newsletter, said Murdoch wouldn't go to the extremes of making the paper sensationalistic. "He also owns The Times of London," Cohn said. "That's still well-respected. There's no girlie pictures on Page 1." But Murdoch did change The Times of London after buying it in 1981. After the takeover, The Times abandoned courtesy titles in headlines. The front page also began featuring eye-catching photos unrelated to the stories. Front-page pieces included stories about a passenger noticing a crack in a jet's wing midflight and a baby boy killed by a pack of dogs, according to an Associated Press story written months after the takeover. Circulation rose by 11 percent, to slightly more than 300,000, in eight months under the new regime. John Morton, a veteran industry analyst, said Murdoch would be wise to avoid drastic changes at the Journal. "Anytime you start tinkering with what is one of the strongest franchises in the world, if not the strongest, you risk endangering it." * * *