I don’t understand journalists and analysts sometimes.
I respect Rafat Ali and Henry Blodget considerably but I do not see anything wrong with this (maybe because a) I was once an advertising executive and b) this is why companies acquire assets):
First, on WSJ’s relaunch, Ali comments:
As for Murdoch’s own involvement in WSJ, if you had any doubts, here it is: “Rather than entrust the job of all this to subordinates, Murdoch has been devoting half his time since acquiring Dow Jones to reshaping the paper. He has become a regular and jarring presence in the Journal newsroom: ever since he appeared unannounced on Easter–to, as he puts it, ‘set an example’–top editors have been dragging themselves into the Journal’s headquarters across from Ground Zero on Sundays.”
Granted, Ali is not being critical, but there’s a hint of him being surprised in his tone, as in “told you so”… What did he expect?
The man spent $5B on the company at a 60%+ premium. Did anyone expect him to be hands-off? Why is Ali, arguably the most clued-in reporter / journalist acting shocked?
That’s not the only mention I found surprising. Elsewhere, Blodget questions one of Barron’s (Barron’s, of course, is WSJ’s sister publication and also part of Dow Jones) initiatives:
So much for the separation of journalistic church and state. After flipping through through the latest Barron’s, Douglas McIntyre at 24/7 Wall Street argues that, at best, several huge advertisers had advance notice of some of the publication’s stories this week:
News organizations are supposed to keep their advertising departments away from content until after it is published. Otherwise, it at least appears that commerce can influence content. That may not be true at Barron’s, but one would have hoped that the magazine would have seen fit to turn the Morgan Stanley ad down because it looks bad.
With all due respect, no. That is a myth:
The church and state adage involves actually having advertisers pen pieces and pass them as editorial. However, sales people are generally made aware of broad editorial themes. Moreover, much of these opportunities pertain to - sit down folks - the calendar. Here, you might have heard about it. Apart from the odd leap year, there’s not much by way of surprises involved in the Calendar… otherwise known as:
a system of organizing days for a social, religious, commercial or administrative purpose. This organization is done by giving names to periods of time - typically days, weeks, months and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycles of some astronomical phenomenon, such as the cycle of the sun, or the moon.
WSJ is an institution, as is Barron’s, but media, publishing and advertising has remained fundamentally similar for over a hundred years… Facebook won’t change how it works… and folks, neither will Rupert Murdoch.
I might add, Forbes - where Blodget’s colleague Peter Kafka hails from does the same thing. More on that, here. This does not mean that WSJ, Barron’s or Forbes are any worse for it… it just means that the ads are related to the content. Oh the horror.
Disclaimer: I worked for News Corp. from 9/2005 to 12/2005. Today MySpace TV is a distribution partner of News Corp. That does not stop me from being critical of News Corp. when it’s warranted… Also worth noting that at one point, one of their sub-performing units (ie. NOT MySpace or DJ) was suing me back in 2006… or as I call it, the summer of magic.
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