Categories: OLD Media Moves

Lord Voldemort's offer for Hogwarts

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes Tuesday that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is being treated like an evil underworld lord in his quest to purchase The Wall Street Journal because he’s a different type of newspaper owner than the Bancrofts.

Robinson wrote, “All of which means that in an ideal world, the Bancrofts wouldn’t let Murdoch within a mile of the Journal. But this is hardly an ideal world, as far as the newspaper business is concerned. I’m not one of the doomsayers who see The End of Newspapers As We Know Them lurking around the next corner, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that our industry is in the midst of some of that good old ‘creative destruction’ that the Journal’s editorial page regularly praises as the engine of capitalism.

“Whatever else Rupert Murdoch is, he’s not stupid. His tabloids may titillate, but the Times is still a great newspaper. He’s an innovator, even if some people don’t care for some of his innovations. And in Britain, he has just spent more than $1 billion on — get this — new printing presses.

“I don’t see any realistic choice for the Bancrofts but to take the leap.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.