Former Dow Jones CEO: WSJ in better hands

Warren Phillips, a former CEO of Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, believes that the paper is in better hands now that it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, reports Jeff Bercovici of Forbes.com.

Phillips’ comments come in his upcoming book, “Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at the Wall Street Journal.”

Bercovici writes, “Phillips believes the quality of the Journal’s journalism is not only better now than it would have been had Murdoch never come calling; he even thinks it’s better than it was pre-Murdoch, when it routinely collected Pulitzer Prizes for its in-depth investigatory reporting.

“‘[T]he Journal’s distinctiveness has been reduced somewhat and it has grown to look more like other newspapers,’ he concedes. ‘On the other hand, major news and continuing stories of significance — the American banking bailout and related economic crises, the Gulf oil spill, the 2011 Egyptian and Libyan revolutions  and spreading Mideast unrest, for example — have been reported as well as any in the Journal’s history and, in most cases, in more timely and thorough fashion than the performance of competitors.’

“And Phillips agrees with the Special Committee created to safeguard the Journal from it owner’s meddling that such meddling has not been a problem. ‘It’s debatable whether the paper’s long-treasured independence has been ‘lost,’ but there is no sign to date that its integrity has been compromised. Dire predictions that Murdoch would use the Journal’s news columns to advance his commercial and political interests have not come to pass in the years since the acquisition.'”

Read more here.