Categories: OLD Media Moves

Pooley story about Murdoch is best of 2007

Marketwatch media columnist Jon Friedman picks Eric Pooley’s profile of News Corp.Â CEO Rupert Murdoch in Time magazineÂ as he wasÂ trying to acquire The Wall Street Journal and launch Fox Business Network as the best story of the year.

Friedman wrote, “Everyone in the media world was obsessively predicting what he might do next. Our speculation became the media’s great parlor game. For the record, lots of us are STILL fixated on this topic.

“Pooley’s biggest accomplishment was getting behind the scenes and putting his readers in the room with Murdoch.

“In retrospect, Pooley’s timing seems even more fortuitous when you recall that News Corp. was also only a few months away from yet another audacious move: the October launch of the Fox Business Network.

“FBN, in its own right, represents the most daring media start-up of 2007, edging out Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine. By executing either the Dow Jones takeover OR the FBN rollout, News Corp. would have been the dominant media story of the year.”

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.