[lbo-talk] request for WSJ article

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Jun 25 11:43:57 PDT 2006


On Jun 25, 2006, at 2:15 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:


> Don't you think "the people who matter" (the ruling class in general
> and their elite servants, major investors, finance capital, etc) need
> something like the WSJ in order to keep "balance" (maintain the status
> quo, get feedback that is not simply NYT propaganda or corporate
> publicity?

They need it, but hey, capitalism isn't a charity. If the profits aren't good enough, they'll just have to go without. Like many other "quality" newspapers, the WSJ's parent, Dow Jones, has a heavy family ownership, which has insulated it from the nastiest pressures for profit maximization, but that's not likely to last forever. All the complex and interesting reporting and editing (the WSJ is very well- edited for a newspaper - the quality of the headlines is a sign of that) is expensive. And I really wonder how much of that good stuff the big cheeses read - I bet a lot of them lack both the time and inclination.

And while there's a lot of propaganda in the NYT, there's a lot of really useful info in there too. It's very far from worthless.

Doug



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