Clash of the Titans

A prominent magazine recently ran a feature explaining the significance of Rupert Murdoch’s recent purchase of the Wall Street Journal. Journalism, said the article, is an endangered species. Across the country, newsrooms are downsizing, radio operations are consolidating, and editors are being turned over at a rapid pace in the hope that fresh leadership will bring with it marketing prowess. The cause is apparent to even the casual observer: the internet has ended the monopoly that radio, TV and paper have enjoyed on the publics access to information. Against this backdrop, Murdoch’s takeover of the WSJ represents a welcome infusion of capital, but at the same time means… Murdoch. Murdoch is notorious for intensely involved approach to his media properties. This link provides a bit of history:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/32512?tid=relatedcl. The cartoon provides a bit of laughter.

In a nutshell, the WSJ takeover can be portrayed as a title round bout between the two great gods of the media: credibility and economics. Journalism.org finds a direct link between the rise of one and the demise of the other:

That is related to one of the other major threads in the findings. Journalists in this survey are much less concerned than three years ago or eight years earlier about issues of quality and credibility. In earlier years the quality of the coverage was the chief concern among those surveyed. In 1999, 44% named issues of quality as the top problem facing journalism as did 41% in 2004. Now half as many, about two in ten, place these issues at the top. The same drop occurred among local journalists, falling from 33% in 2004 to 21% in 2007.
Concerns about the lack of credibility declined even more, falling from 28% of national journalists and 23% of locals naming it as the top problem in 2004 to just 9% for both groups this year.
Yet this does not mean that journalists are now satisfied. Less than 20% of journalists named the quality of coverage as something that journalism “is doing especially well these days.”
But these concerns over quality may now be more concerned with resources than with the attitudes or professionalism of the journalist. Indeed, this concern is overwhelmingly shared. More than eight in ten journalists surveyed, a greater percentage than in 2004, agree that news organizations have cut back too much on the scope of their reporting and that too little attention is paid to complex issues.
What seems to be happening instead is that other, more pressing issues have evolved — namely those of money and bottom-line pressures.

The study portrays the clash between economics and credibility on the supply side: as funds languish, the resources needed to thoroughly vet and cross-check stories disappear. The freedom of reporters to investigate complex issues, or pursue the leads that lead them to all important scoops, evaporates with the need for an immediate product. However, the issue is a demand side one as well: The economics of a media are simple: the larger the audience, the greater the potential for profit. This effect may be blunted by another effect: trust- which can only be established with the consistent accuracy of news- also sells. It remains to be seen if these forces cancel each other out, erasing the problem of credibility vs. economics at least from the demand side.
In this context, Murdoch and the WSJ are in fact just one case study within a larger phenomenon. It is not surprising the Journalism.com also found (un)healthy tension between media executives (who worship at the alter of economics) and their reporter underlings (who are- in theory- more inclined towards credibility):

This divide first can be seen in the questions about values. More than half (55%) of national executives felt their reporters substantially shared their values. Only 30% of reporters feel this way about their top owners and editors. And the gap is even greater between executives and newsroom staff. At the local level, only 23% reporters felt their bosses shared their values, versus 47% of executives and 31% of senior editors who felt this way about their reporters.
The divide can also be seen in how the line journalists rank their leaders. Just 12% of national reporters and 6% of local gave their leaders a rating of excellent (over half of executives offered this highest mark about themselves). And when asked specifically about the leadership’s transition to the Internet, executives again gave more positive assessments than did newsroom staff.
This concern over values also extends to how journalists see the influence of corporate ownership. Even greater divides exist over the influence of corporate owners in story selection. Reporters were five to six times as likely to say that corporate owners had a great deal of influence over coverage (11% of national and 13% of local journalists versus not a single national executive and 2% of local executives.) Very similar divides existed over the influence that advertising concerns have on content.

Let the battle begin.