Rupert Murdoch Is Mad but Cute

The Wall Street Journal was a great paper. It is still a pretty great paper but it is not the great Wall Street Journal. That former paper, with its particular look and feel and characteristically myopic focus on business and finance, has departed the stage, replaced by a vigorous, strong-minded paper focused on equal parts business, politics and public policy, and great events of the day. To that, its owner for almost two years now, Rupert Murdoch, is now adding a specifically New York focus.

Murdoch is a singular fellow and a simple one. When he bought the Journal he said his plan was to compete with the New York Times. Many people thought that this was a battle cry or market view. He wanted the Journal to take readers and advertisers from the Times. Almost nobody thought he wanted the Journal to be the New York Times.

It is curious, to say the least, to see personal obsessions play out in the business world. Murdoch announced the quarterly results for his company, News Corp, yesterday. They showed dismal prospects for his newspapers everywhere in the world. And yet he is not to be dissuaded from the notion that newspapers provide the meaning of his life and the purpose of his company and that the New York Times, as the greatest newspaper the world has ever known, must be conquered if his ambitions are to be fulfilled.

In this quest, Murdoch is Ahab. His obsession is as single-minded and his reason and sanity (at least his business sanity) are as much at issue.

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