The WSJ, the NYT and the Goldman story

Jeff Bercovici of DailyFinance.com wonders whether The Wall Street Journal got scooped Friday by the New York Times on the SEC filing charges against Goldman Sachs because of the changes that Rupert Murdoch has made since acquiring the business newspaper.

Bercovici writes, “Journal insiders are divided over whether and to what extent the paper’s new emphasis on non-business news has eroded its core competency. ‘I know the anti-Murdoch narrative is that he’s taking away from business to do all these other things, but I don’t really see that,’ says one. ‘If you’re doing a scorecard, the Journal’s still ahead on scoops in the Wall Street banking area.’

“Another observer, a former longtime Journal editor, says the paper does lose to the Times more often than it used to, but he dates the change not to Murdoch’s takeover but to the arrival on the scene of Andrew Ross Sorkin, the Times‘s ace mergers-and-acquisitions reporter. ‘It used to be assumed that if there was a story to be broken on M&A, the Journal had it,’ says the editor. ‘The beat got a lot more competitive once Andrew got on it.’

“Asked whether he thinks the Journal is a less formidable rival on the business front these days, Ingrassia, himself a Journal veteran, demurs: ‘There’s a lot of great competition out there. The Journal still does a lot of great work.'”

Read more here.