WSJ making a mistake by forcing reporters to break more news

Dean Starkman, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now writes for Columbia Journalism Review, says that Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson‘s edict last week that the paper’s reporters be judged more by the news they break is moving the paper in the wrong direction.

Starkman writes, “First, Thomson needs to stop taking sophomoric digs at his staff. That’s our job.

“Second, any implication that Journal writers are lolling around, not working hard enough, and don’t share Thomson’s sense of urgency about the crisis in newspapers is a joke. If they worked any harder over there there’d be nothing left but a few pools of butter on the newsroom floor.

“Third, you’re talking about squeezing a toothpaste tube here. Nothing is for free. You want scoops, political news, international news, you lose something else. Cranking up the newsroom hamster-wheel is what news organizations in trouble have always done. No one has demonstrated that it works. It is also the bureaucratic response. It is easy to measure words, exclusives, stories per reporter, etc. It’s harder to measure greatness.

“Fourth, Murdoch and Thomson have to get over their own conflicts and angst about the property Murdoch bought and Thomson now runs. What gave the Journal its value was, first and foremost, by a long shot, its legendary Page One. The paper’s greatness was the reason Murdoch wanted it in the first place, even while — as Wolff’s biography of Murdoch makes clear — resenting it. If Murdoch saw the value in scoops, he would have gone after Reuters. But he didn’t, did he?”

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