Murdoch to Bury the Leder? Rethinks Journal Strategy
MORE Off the Record
On Jan. 9, Wall Street Journal bureau chiefs from around the world gathered for a night of cocktails and dinner at the Marriott Hotel on West Street in the Financial District.
It was the annual bureau chiefs’ meeting, and it gave Rupert Murdoch his first chance to speak to bureau chiefs and senior editors at Dow Jones en masse, and to answer some questions.
It didn’t take long for Mr. Murdoch to start some controversy. At the meeting, according to three people who attended, Mr. Murdoch spelled out a theme he’s been emphasizing since last year, but in renewed terms: that front-page feature stories are too long and might be better suited for a weekend reader who has more time to read them.
It’s a touchy subject within Journal culture, and it set off an alarm in the newsroom in the days following. Reporters and editors worried that Mr. Murdoch’s plans would diminish a famed Journal institution, the so-called “leder” stories.
“There’s definitely concern that the longer special pieces at The Journal are going to be reined in,” said Josh Prager, a special writer for the Journal. “It is a concern for me as a person who likes writing them and likes reading them.”
Mr. Prager contributed one 5,000-word story in December 2006 that was his total contribution to the paper for the year. But at a meeting on Jan. 10 at Bayard’s, new publisher Robert Thomson joked that a leder shouldn’t take as long to turn around as the “gestation of a llama,” or about 350 days.
Mr. Prager, who did not attend the bureau chief’s meeting, said there was “ambient” noise in the newsroom about it; one reporter described the newsroom as “dismayed,” another as “very nervous.”
(One bureau chief cautioned that reporters and editors were taking the “most dire interpretation” of Mr. Murdoch’s remarks. Another said: “The things [Mr. Murdoch] said were not prescriptive. He didn’t say we’re implementing things this way or that way.”)
At The Journal, the leder—different from the generally more lighthearted or quirky A-hed story—is a rite of passage and can define a career.
In a ritual akin to giving a major leaguer a game ball after his first career hit, a young reporter is given a copy of the plate used by the printing press when he writes his first front-page leder. Likewise, in the hierarchy of front-page stories—the A-hed, a leder, an extra—the front-page leder is the king of the hill and is generally the first thing brought up in yearly review meetings between reporters and editors. It is, as one put it, “the soul of the paper.”
The stories are big, long-form journalism with a big theme—one described it as a magazine story for that day’s edition of the paper. (And in a day—poof!—it’s gone!)
Unless you have a subscription to WSJ.com. But then, hadn’t Mr. Murdoch talked about making that free? Yes, in November 2007 Mr. Murdoch said he’d make the site available without a subscription in “every corner of the earth.”
But according to three people present at the bureau chiefs’ meeting last week, Mr. Murdoch has scaled back his ambition to make WSJ.com entirely free. “He said he originally thought making it free would bring in the biggest audience, but that after studying it it’s not as simple as he thought,” said one person present.
Mr. Murdoch said that they would continue to study it, and there’s a strong possibility that a hybrid model would be created perhaps similar to what’s being used now (The Journal’s news content is currently behind a firewall; its opinion page was opened for free last week).
In his comments to editors, Mr. Murdoch also returned to familiar territory when he again went on his attack of The New York Times. According to two people present, Mr. Murdoch said that it was a vulnerable institution and that it’s cultural coverage, specifically, was lightweight. Mr. Murdoch said that The Journal could easily beef up its cultural coverage and steal the Times reader away.
Mr. Murdoch also discussed the value of sports in the newspaper, said three people. At one point, while speaking about the limitations of The Journal’s production plants, he said that it would serve a reader to have a table of sports scores for a traveling businessman; he didn’t specifically say The Journal would add a sports section, but that it could have a role in the paper.
Rupert Murdoch is once again demonstrating that, as an owner of newsmedia, he is a shoot-from-the-hip journalistic ignoramous. His approach may be suited to his sleazy supermarket tabloids or the perpetually bankrupt N Y Post, but not to a respectable print news medium. If he wants so badly to own another newspaper and allow it to succeed, as the WSJ has for so many years, he should get out of the way, let the real journalists run the newspaper, go home, and count his money. But of course, his monstrous ego may not allow that until just MAYBE it might occur to him that he is totally inept in pretending to RUN, but is instead RUINING a great newspaper, and that he may end up have having to support yet another failing newspaper. If he loses enough pocket money on the WSJ venture, he may one day realize that he's more like a Hitler who thought he was a great general while he was losing the war. Self delusion and overabundant ego are a terrible combination.
Beef up the Journal's cultural coverage to steal readers from the Times? That's rich. Just what the hip culturati want from the Journal, more neanderthal culture writing. . .
My biggest concern about Murdoch's purchase of the Journal has always been that his determination to compete with the Times may end up destroying what the WSJ. The people who read the Journal do not read it to read about culture, disasters, crime, sports, etc.
Now, some of the Journal's cultural coverage is actually pretty good - the part produced by the news division. The limited sports coverage it has is much better than the average paper's, and some of the critics are quite sharp. But no one needs to read the WSJ to get the latest sports scores; they get it on the net. Most newspapers are moving away from "what happened" coverage for a good reason.
I love long WSJ stories. But I only get to read them about as often as Prager writes one. Why? No time!
I really REALLY hate to say that, but it's the truth. Our society has changed. Newspapers can too. They must, or go the way of other NYC businesses that thrived when WSJ started: blacksmith, milliner, cobbler ... news boy.
Ugh.
You have got to be kidding me with these top-down decisions. I understand that Mr. Murdoch has made a lot of money making top-down decisions, but the journal has never been (and probably shouldn't be) just like everyone else.
It's been able to separate itself from the pack by delivering news that a certain segment of the population can use. Its as much a status symbol of wealth as it is of knowledge. Its competition is not the Times... its competition is itself.
No time to read long newspapers articles? Swallow hard and switch to USA TODAY. It has more depth than NYT and WSJ readers EVER give it credit for and covers all of the days issues. And no one covers national sports better.
You left out an important point made over and over at the meeting. Murdoch is making a very big commitment to the NEWSPAPER.
He and Thomson made it clear that they had no regard at all for the "Journal 3.0" plan so highly touted last year by previous managers. They wanted news--breaking, enterprise, scoops--online and leave "analysis" and "what it all means" to the paper edition. Talk about ruining journalism. A plan like that would have ultimately killed leders, A-heds and the whole paper.
It was clear at the meeting that Murdoch expects to see the news in the morning paper, to give readers a compelling reason to buy the Journal and to read it.
Quibble we may about story selection, length, "gestation," but this looks like a positive development for the paper and its journalists, advertisers and readers.
Necessary change is in the wind. It's funny you guys got Prager to comment - the guy writes once a year at best and then goes off to write a book on what he's written. Meanwhile, other folks who churn out dozens of articles a year - many of them good, sound, colorful and full of news and incisive analysis - are treated as drones and drudges. It's time Murdoch took a wrecking ball to the whole structure, and it's my understanding he has told confidantes at News Corp. that he finds the internal workplace culture of the Journal "terrible." If news becomes the coin of the realm, not "leders" that it takes months to write, then perhaps the WSJ might make money and news- not such a bad thing in today's difficult times.
Murdoch worries me, but there's a good chance he could improve the Journal. For example, there have been at least two attempts I know of in recent years to reduce the size of leders. The goal of one of them was to hold these stories down to page 1--no jumps. Another idea was not to run more than six inches or so on the jump. These attempts fit in with the current front page's brief columns. This is still a great concept. A lot of good WSJ reporters were in favor of cutting the size of leders, but the stories kept getting bigger. I've been reading the WSJ ever since 1955 and I believe a lot of the negative comments being made about what Murdoch might do are off-base and off-the-wall.
I worked at the WSJ way back in the early '80s, and leders almost never ran more than 1,500 words. They were substantial pieces with big themes, but they weren't 5,000-word magazine articles.
i'll leave the leder issue be, except to say that one prager story is always worth whatever amount of time he needs to put into it. the guy is a national treasure. anybody who begrudges him his place in the paper is just jealous and probably hasn't earned the privileges he has because their ideas simply aren't as good.
the wsj's culture coverage, meanwhile, is totally irrelevant. why? because dow jones has persisted in letting the editorial page oversee it. that's right -- the stuff that's turned out in the back of the personal journal section during the week and the book reviews in general is put out by the same folks who write the unsigned editorials. makes a ton of sense doesn't it?!
anytime a reporter wants to write something even remotely analytical, they throw a hissy fit. meanwhile, the stuff churned out by the edit page is dry as dust and ignored as such by the world. forget their politics (neanderthal or not); their cultural coverage simply sucks. no polite way to put it.
it's such a shame -- and such a waste of newsprint. give the whole thing to eben shapiro and the weekend group and let them rethink it.
you're wrong in saying that the journal's opinion pages have only been opened to free internet access in the last week or so. they've been free for many months. in fact, i don't think they were ever restricted to paying customers, as the news pages are.
You're all missing the point. Rupert didn't buy the WSJ to buy a newspaper, but to buy a digital property. How many people are willing to read a 5,000-word article online? There may come a time in the not-too-distant future when a WSJ reporter will supplement his article with what he shot with his digital camera and all of it will be online, on your mobile device. Newspapers and broadcast television are quickly become anachronisms. You may not like Murdoch's politics (although they are hardly distinguishable from Robert Bartlett's that still haunt the Journal) but he knows the media quite well. No one is better positioned for the digital age of news.
Nothing against Prager, but he should be a contributing writer, not a fulltime staffer. If there is jealousy towards him there, it's because of the sweet deal he has. He covers no beat, has no corporate responsibilities, etc. Sure, there's some envy to that, but it would be less so if he were a little more prolific. Heck even the New Yorker requires more copy than he produces. And yes, his stories are good, but the sad truth is they don't fit with where the WSJ is headed now. Right or wrong, that's the case.
In the perfect world, the WSJ would be able to support, as it has in the past, those who contribute stories that would be as likely to appear in the New Yorker or Vanity Fair and maintain the core coverage of corporte America, but it can't anymore and which type of coverage do you think pays the bills?
In the meantime, talk to some other reporters there who crank out major stories that actually lead to huge changes and investigations ranging from back dating stocks to the ouster of the head of Bear Sterns.
I think a lot of water is boiling on this issue -- and it's all quite premature. Mr. Murdoch is confronting the prime conundrum in all economic matters -- allocating scarce means among competing ends.
In this case the scarce means include (probably among others) reader time, production capacity, distribution capability, and the price of newsprint. The ends include keeping the WSJ strong in a world which demands constant change; challenging the NYTtimes; preserving attractiveness to advertisers; making optimum use of the (still infant) internet . . . and many more.
Mr. Murdoch is a very downy bird. He appears to shoot from the hip, get flip with the off-hand remark. But I think he rarely does that. He stirs the pot and sees what bubbles up.
I doubt he bought the WSJ to destroy it. Don't get your bowls (or bladder) in an uproar. Too early if that, if, indeed the time ever comes.
I'm a WSJ reader for some 30 years who probably will stop reading it because of all the tinkering. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Bring back larger pages, eight columns on a page, wider columns, larger type. I don't want more interpretation--I will read the Economist for that. If anything, I want more news, more exclusives, and fewer second-day stories.
I like the contrast on the front page of the two-column news summary with the three longer stories that jump to the inside; if I don't have the time to read the longer stories in one sitting, I will find the time to do so later at work or at home. Drop the photos; use more artist sketches. Forget horizontal, two-column layout; I like vertical layout that disciplines a story to one column in width. Drop the Saturday edition and Personal Journal.
In addition, bring back the daily stock market and mutual fund results. Forget Culture with a capital C; since when does Wall Street have Culture? Reduce the opinion pages; I have my own opinions, and I don't need to have the Journal torturing facts in pursuit of some conservative (or liberal) agenda.
Drop the expanded coverage of advertising and media and of real estate unless its absolutely necessary to get more ads. Forget sports and entertainment unless they are covered as a business.
And don't expect me to read online news on a computer: I want to spread the newspaper out on a table or desk and be able to take the whole thing in at a page at a glance. I'm also quite capable of folding a newspaper in half lengthwise to read it on a crowded subway.
I certainly don't want to read news looking at a vertical computer monitor any more than I want to read it on a vertical TV screen or on a wall. I also don't want to spend all day watching a screen; I want my news once a day, served up by editors whose news judgment I've learned to trust over time.
I've probably inadvertently overlooked some of the unfortunate changes that WSJ has made in recent years; but I've identified enough to underscore why I'm increasingly likely to be dropping my subscription. My hope is that, as Murdoch/Dow Jones continues trying to remake this newspapr into a New York Times wannabe and as Forbes, Fortune and Business Week continue trying to become general interest magazines, then some smart entrepreneur will recognize that an opening exists to create a business newspaper to fill the void. If so, here's a novel idea for a name: The Wall Street Journal.
Rupert would look cute in Lederhosen,dontcha think?
How about a daily Financial/Wall St. pin-up?
Works in London....
Rupert would look cute in Lederhosen,dontcha think?
How about a daily Financial/Wall St. pin-up?
Works in London....
If Prager is such a "national treasure," as one ex-wsjer puts it, then he should go out and get an endowment or get a post at some non-profit that supports the kind of work he does. There's little room for it at a corporate entity that needs to allocate its monies to those resources that deliver return! How does earning a salary for writing once a year deliver a return on the investment?
I'm not quite sure if it's a good move. Like one previous poster said, if it's not broken, don't fix it. I am never against improvement, but change is always dangerous. Only some food for though here.
The future will tell us if it's a good move, hopefully i'll be wrong :)
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