Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post takes a look Thursday at the proposed acquisition of Dow Jones & Co. by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and wonders whether The Wall Street Journal’s staffer’s fears are overblown based on what happened after Murdoch bought The Times of London.
Ahrens wrote, “It’s hard for some to imagine a weirder mixed marriage in journalism than Murdoch and the Journal, the august paper of record for the U.S. economy. When most people think ‘Murdoch,’ they probably don’t think ‘august.’ They probably think ‘Married With Children, Bill O’Reilly and the famous screaming headlines of London tabloids and the New York Post.
“But U.K. journalists had similar fears in 1981, when Murdoch bought the venerated Times of London. It was a publication so upper-crust, its motto was ‘The Top People’s Paper.’ Some feared that the audacious Aussie would do a journalistic drop-trou on the Fleet Street grandee.
“And indeed, the Times switched to a tabloid size in 2004. But that’s largely where the similarities end. Over the past 26 years, Murdoch has treated the Times as the journalistic crown jewel of his empire, according to current and former employees.
“Times staffers in London say that if Murdoch gets the Journal, he may handle it as he does the Times: as a valuable nexus for the latest intelligence on the global marketplace.”
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