Many years ago, when I was a business reporter here, I was working on a deadline piece about something going on at RJR Nabisco. I wan’t having much luck. Then I got a call from the head of public relations at the company, a guy who never returned or acknowledged my phone calls (This was before the days of email...) Anyway, he was chatty, helpful, useful. Then he realized I worked for the other WSJ, as in Winston-Salem Journal, and not THE WSJ, as in Wall Street Journal. Apparently his assistant had been unclear in her message. He hung up 5 seconds later.
The battle for control of Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, is now playing out in front of us, with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp making an offer. It’s a recognition of the hidden value of newspapers and the power of a brand, in this case, the Journal’s brand as the place for national business news.
Long before I was dissed for not working at the right Journal, I did work there, as a 30-hr-a-week copy boy. I was a News Clerk 2, which was so many rungs down the editorial ladder that you needed a flashlight and a trail of breadcrumbs to even get a glimpse of a future. I fixed printers that were jammed, ran errands to get cigarettes and passports for editors, hustled stories between floors, basically anything that anybody above me (which was everybody) wanted me to do. And I learned a lot just by watching some brilliant, brilliant journalists do their jobs and sweat the details until it was right. An amazing, complicated, inefficient and energetic newsroom.
So, it’s a little sad to see what is likely to become some sort of sale/deal/merger etc. involving a newspaper that in my mind is really a national institution and that has an exceptional journalistic model (in print and online) but can’t quite seem to get the financial model to gel.
We’ve had an ongoing discussion about what to call Shaha Riza. She is the woman near the center of the controversy at the World Bank involving Paul Wolfowitz. Early accounts called her Wolfowitz’s companion. Some referred to her as “long-time companion” or even “female companion.” Now, the style has shifted back to the more generic “girlfriend.” They all have their flaws. An editor here, taking a page from the NY Post (owned by Murdoch’s News Corp.) suggests the colloquial and colorful Wolfy Gal Pal.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
While I doubt it will actually happen, there’s been some talk about Google buying the WSJ and placing in a non-profit trust (now wouldn’t that be an interesting play?!).
For news industry junkies like me, the potential sale of a titan like the WSJ makes for good rumor and adds a little excitement to the day.
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