So it looks like Murdoch will be taking over the Wall Street Journal. But is his hunger for the Journal nothing more than the paper's karma? The New Statesman thinks so:
Let us imagine that a century-old manufacturing company based in a Midwestern town is being stalked by a corporate asset-stripper. The company turns a modest profit and is both the backbone of the local economy and, through tradition and good works, the heart of the community. What does the Wall Street Journal say?
It says bad luck, the predator can take your company and pull it apart in the name of efficiencies, synergies and the like, and your town must suffer because the market must have its way. That has been the Journal's message for generations, a message delivered with a consistency and vigour that few other papers, even the People's Daily of Beijing, can rival.
So you might think that, when Rupert Murdoch came knocking on the Journal's door with his $5bn takeover bid, the paper's staff, and particularly the senior staff, would put their hands up and go peacefully to the fate they have wished upon countless other managers and employees.
But no, the Journal is special, we are told, and shouldn't be bought and sold like other businesses. And Murdoch is especially bad, so he must make pledges not to meddle with the paper's editorial independence.
From this distance (both geographical and ideological), it is a little hard to swallow. Though a lot of distinguished careers may well end with a change of regime, it is still difficult to resist the feeling that if there is one newspaper in the world that deserves Rupert Murdoch, it might be the Journal.
They're right. It has been Journal gospel for decades that the market provides, and takeovers are healthy, and companies should not be protected from acquisition for reasons of sentimentalism and undue attachment to their old way of business. But it turns out that when it's their jobs, and their standards, and their home on the line, suddenly the will of the market might be getting it wrong in this one, little case.
What would the national discourse on capitalism, competition, and globalization look like in this country were the elites who drive the conversation even minimally exposed to the ills they so often dismiss? Would Tom Friedman be so unhesitatingly pro-globalization was his adoration for trade not insanely lucrative for him?
