Murdoch and the Journal

Krugman thinks it's a shame:

In any case, do we want to see one of America’s two serious national newspapers in the hands of a man who has done so much to mislead so many?...

To be honest I don't much care. As I see it now, the Journal brings some excellent reporting to the table--reporting that it would be sad to lose--but it does so effectively as a cover for its insane editorial pages, which do about as much as any entity I can think of outside of actual politics to advance truly disastrous ideas. They don't speak to wingnuts. They speak to highly educated, powerful, white collar people--potential liberals who are inundated with the Journal's faux-intellectual right wing drivel every day, and are often susceptible to it.

If Murdoch buys the Journal and it in no way changes, well, then, that's a wash. But if Murdoch buys it and turns the reporting into a joke--to where it's wealthy base no longer trusts it as it does today--I can actually see how that might be a good thing. It certainly can't make the conservative media much worse.

That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Krugman here:

If there were any justice in the world, Mr. Murdoch, who did more than anyone in the news business to mislead this country into an unjustified, disastrous war, would be a discredited outcast. Instead, he’s expanding his empire.