The Ad

The first red flag was The Ad at the bottom of page A5 in the Tuesday, April 22nd edition of the Wall Street Journal, a splashy, gaudy piece that reeked of the glitz and gloss that we’re accustomed to when confronted by Fox News. “Here’s what CNN doesn’t want you to know,” it led, and at first, its dry presentation of Nielsen tables made it appear to be strictly targeted at media buyers and advertisers.

Then the zinger tag: “If you can’t trust CNN’s advertising, how can you trust their journalism?”

“Uh-oh… they’re right, Martha, how can we trust those mendacious, journalistic thugs at CNN?” (nail biting, nail biting.)

This is one of the Red Flags that careful Journal readers had been waiting for, since Rupert Murdoch took over the Wall Street Journal. We knew it was coming, in one way or another, despite the general impression given by Mr. Murdoch that he respected the newspaper and its traditions and despite the presence of a Special Committee to protect the editorial independence and standards of Dow Jones publications.

What The Ad screamed out instantly was a decline in credibility for The Wall Street Journal. Because we know the Journal is “in the family” now, and this ad’s placement, style and content is more than just a regular ad buy in a national newspaper; it represents, whether the Journal likes it or not, a changing of attitude about what journalism is, an attitude that unmistakably comes from the top. This ad communicates just as much or more than the essays and columns written for the op-ed page.

And what it communicates is the simple but ridiculous assumption that higher ratings equate to higher journalistic integrity.

This is a notion that I suspect insults the intelligence of many who have appreciated (and, for the moment, continue to appreciate) the Wall Street Journal’s long tradition of well researched and in-depth investigative reporting, alongside good, factual short news (the “What’s News–” sidebar is an elegant example of this), without regard to its popularity or raw sales figures.

And then, on page B1, and then, on the front page of the next day’s edition, the next ominous sign of doom: the departure (effectively a dismissal) of managing editor Marcus Brauchli. Mr. Brauchli was the point person who served as intermediary between the impatient Mr. Murdoch and a news and editorial staff who prized their style of journalism that was labeled “a bit stodgy” and “academic.”

It could be reasonably speculated that Mr. Brauchli was responsible for instituting changes to the newspaper that were true journalistic and aesthetic improvements and could also serve to placate Mr. Murdoch’s business demands. A newly designed op-ed section, with more content and a simpler, more elegant layout, might certainly serve to increase readership and circulation. And the Wall Street Journal’s own commendable in-depth article on Mr. Brauchli’s departure suggested his commitment to the Wall Street Journal’s reputation for in-depth news and reporting. Mr. Brauchli had recently “reassured bureau chiefs that there was still a demand for longer, more complex stories, even as the paper was moving in a newsier direction.”

However, the recent changes are apparently not enough. When Mr. Murdoch states openly to the newspaper’s editors that he wants a more “attractive” paper that tells stories in “as few words as possible,” and the Journal’s new publisher Robert Thomson declares that “the real enemy is time” in discussing the length of articles, it continues to erode one’s confidence that the Wall Street Journal will for much longer hold on to what brought many of its readers there in the first place: its credibility and authority on matters of critical importance to our society.

And though one must (and fairly easily can) read between its lines, for now we can applaud the Journal’s reasonably frank, open and thorough story on Mr. Brauchli’s departure. But we can also see the writing on the wall and clearly understand that these types of articles, whether they deal with internal matters or otherwise, are quickly becoming a thing of the past at the Journal.

There’s no question that the newspaper business is in trouble, and has been for some time. It has clearly been redefined by the internet and other electronic communication. But what will become of authoritative news sources like the Wall Street Journal in this climate? What will become of insightful, long-form storytelling that speaks the truth better than “breaking news” and lurid headlines ever will? “But wait,” one might say, “they still exist in other forms — The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Salon.com.” But the Wall Street Journal is a unique institution, a daily, national newspaper whose authority rests on their reputation and the reader’s knowledge that there is a vast network of journalists and editors in service to this institution.

What all of this means is that soon there will be one less authoritative source. And with that departure, society’s sense of authority for news and information sources will continue to erode. And what exactly is “sense of authority” in journalism? More on that next time.