Rupert Murdoch’s arrival at The Wall Street Journal is being greeted by American journalists with roughly the level of enthusiasm with which the Romans greeted Alaric the Visigoth. The Atlantic Monthly proclaims that the day the elderly tycoon took over the Journal was “a date that will live in infamy for a certain generation of American newsmen”.
The Atlantic frets that the Murdoch model will sacrifice “responsible, serious journalism” and damage public life in the process. Mr Murdoch’s defenders regard this as self-important tosh.
Of course, the reactions of anybody watching events at The Wall Street Journal from the Financial Times are bound to be a little complicated. But my first instincts were sympathetic to Mr Murdoch. A lot of American newspaper journalism strikes me as self-reverential, long-winded, over-edited and stuffy.
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