[lbo-talk] Re: request for WSJ article

[Tim Francis-Wright]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> 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.

But the WSJ does not really depend on a small cadre of big cheeses, but 
on its 2 million or so subscribers, a lot of whom are using it to try to 
beat the stock market.  And learning about corporate malfeasance is 
very, very important to them.

--tim francis-wright