From its headline, “Remaking the Journal,” the front page of the New York Times’ business section about Rupert Murdoch and the Wall St. Journal seemed like it could be interesting.
Mostly the 1600-word article reported on rumors about changes Rupe planned to make or decided against making.
According to the article, there are already plans to eliminate the Journal’s Marketplace, “containing articles on business trends and technology, in the first half of next year, with a new section taking its place, according to people at Dow Jones and the News Corporation who have been briefed on the changes. The editor of Marketplace, Melinda Beck, recently left that post to write a column on health, and no replacement has been named.”
The article also noted that “The Journal has been hiring new reporters and has made lucrative offers to a number of prominent journalists at The Times and elsewhere, mostly unsuccessfully.”
But the article contained little that was news or insightful.
For example, because of the uncertainty, some reporters have left the Journal. In fact, the Times recently picked up Tara Parker-Pope, a long-time Journal health reporter who is now reporting and blogging for the Times.
Here’s an example that the Times didn’t have a real story: Take a look at the last line of the article: “A lot of us are at least a little worried about what this place will become,” said one veteran reporter at The Journal. “But right now our attitude is, wait and see.”