Rupert's breakfast brainstorm
As Rupert Murdoch read his New York Times this morning, it must have struck him like a kangaroo punch in the outback: He was making a play for the wrong paper!
He would surely feel satisfied with David D. Kirkpatrick's piece in today's Times about his effort to pick up the Wall Street Journal. His genius, his advisers say, has been a knack for spotting flabbiness in establishment interests that appeared impossible to unseat.....
But then he turns to Byron Calame's farewell column as public editor. In it, after wringing his hands over the repercussions to journalistic quality now that journalists must write for the newspaper and the Web, Calame thanks his assistant, his two editors and his copy editor.
Say what!!!??? ole Rupert must think. The guy writes two whole columns a month (a third is handled by yet another person). He has an assistant to handle reader e-mails and calls. His primary sources -- the editors of the Times -- are pretty easy for him to reach. Am I spotting flabbiness, Rupert certainly asks himself? He picks up the phone....