New York Observer: Murdoch To Times: I Will Bury You! Keller Bristles
Rupert Has Seen Future: It’s Insurgent Journal Vs. ‘Monolithic Media’
by Michael Calderone
Published: October 16, 2007
....Even as Rupert Murdoch uses FBN, his latest News Corp. project, to take on the existing business television establishment in the form of CNBC and Bloomberg, he and his top lieutenants appear to have one eye on the coming struggle with a more iconic foe. To Mr. Murdoch, The New York Times represents exhibit A in his case that the mainstream—that is, the non-Murdoch-owned—media ignores a certain viewpoint: namely, that particular blend of conservative populism, tabloid exuberance and capitalist cheerleading with which he has rewritten the rules of the news business. Now Mr. Murdoch, 76, is gearing up to use The Wall Street Journal to further that viewpoint—and in the process, knock The Times off its pedestal.
“My worry about The New York Times is that it’s got the only position as a national elitist general interest paper,” Mr. Murdoch told Time magazine in June. “So the network news picks its cues from The Times. And local papers do, too. It has a huge influence. And we’d love to challenge that.”
It’s becoming clear, then, that Mr. Murdoch plans to give The Times its first taste of real competition since the New York Herald Tribune folded in 1966, by going after The Times’ status as the national paper of record. But what’s not clear is whether The Times accepts that the gantlet has been thrown down.
Since Mr. Murdoch and his band of pirates began rattling their sabers this summer, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger has maintained a dignified silence—and he declined The Observer’s request to comment on the coming showdown. But Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor, questioned the viability of Mr. Murdoch’s plan to build an alternative national paper. “Good journalism for an intelligent general audience is hard,” he told The Observer in an e-mail. “And we’re really good at it. Taking on The Times is not as easy as waving a credit card and proclaiming yourself ‘fair and balanced.’”...
In early August, just days after bickering Bancrofts accepted News Corp.’s $5 billion offer, Marcus Brauchli, The Journal’s managing editor since May, held a conference call with reporters and editors from the newspaper’s various bureaus. Journal staffers from several cities—including Chicago, Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco—were involved, according to a source on the line. On that call, Mr. Brauchli for the first time relayed to the bureau staffers Mr. Murdoch’s intention to chip away at The Times’ newspaper-of-record mantle, by offering more general news. In the long-term, Mr. Brauchli told his team, The Journal hoped to reorganize its resources so that, for instance, when a bridge collapses in Minnesota, it could quickly be on the scene, just as The Times is....In interviews over the summer, Mr. Murdoch also suggested that several other less far-reaching changes could be in the works: He noted, among other things, that more resources might be funneled into covering politics, both in Washington and internationally, and that he’d give serious thought to eliminating the online pay wall and replacing it with a model based on ad revenue....
http://www.observer.com/2007/murdoch-times-i-will-bury-you-keller-bristles
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