Posted by
THE GREAT SATAN on Friday, July 07, 2006 12:22:28 PM
With all the recent media talk focused on the New York Times--and rightly so-- due to its decision to out yet another anti-terrorism program, the Wall Street Journal deserves a little scrutiny of its own. And not only for its excruciatingly long and intellectually tortured editorial on its own role in this most recent example of a mainstream media meltdown. But primarily because of its decision to part company with the Conservative wing of the Republican party on the issue of immigration reform. If you didn’t know what a “big business” Republican was before now, the Journal has made that clear. (As for “country-club” Republicans, the Journal’s new Saturday edition has pretty much got them covered, but that’s a story for another day.)
The Journal must know its readers pretty well to have gone out on such a limb. I made it pretty clear to them what I thought of their immigration position, and wonder how many other subscribers did. But they stuck-to-their-guns and have fallen a few steps in my esteem.
My Dad subscribed to the Journal because he was a businessman, so I grew up with the paper in my house. But it wasn’t our “news” paper. For that we used the local Newsday and the Sunday New York Times. Now grown, and with those papers having turned extreme, I find myself here in New York with only the Wall Street Journal for daily intellectual company. I tried to believe it was everything I wanted in a paper, but it’s far from it. It just hasn’t lived up to the task of being a comprehensive daily paper. I know how my mutual funds are doing, but too often little else. Did the Journal editors ever realize that they had this contingent of refugee readers from the Times?
D.C. has the Washington Times, and New York is trying with the Sun, but we need help. Back in March of ’05, I wrote a heartfelt letter to Dennis FitzSimons, Chairman of the Tribune Company, the very same Tribune Company on the chopping block today. I advised him to resuscitate the ailing Newsday by taking on the tabloid New York Post (and the as of then un-launched Saturday Wall Street Journal), as New York’s Conservative paper of record. He didn’t listen, and look where it got his company.
I even thought once about somehow buying the New York Times--yes buying it, in order to save it. I figured it was a public company and that Conservative investors could each chip-in a few dollars and purchase something like a 10% ownership in the company. (Just think of those stockholder meetings!) But with a recent market cap of $3.5 billion, and after consulting my wallet, I dropped the idea. Anyone know a right-wing George Soros type who’d like to own a newspaper? (Does Fox News come to mind?) Imagine, buying the Times right out from under the noses of those damnable liberals running the place, and using their most feared of weapons, American capitalism. Ahh, how sweet it would be.
NRO recently commented on the Times’ demise as a great journalistic institution. It was said that the Times still exerts a major influence, but nevertheless an utterly diminished one. How true. It will never be what it was, unless and until all the present players leave the scene, readers included. But for the Journal, its golden opportunity also has come and gone. It couldn’t rise above its original niche, not even with the Times in disarray, or with the support of its many conservative readers who yearned for it to be more than it could. That’s a sad story for the newspaper industry, and sad for the readers. But necessity being the mother of invention, we blog on.