The grey lady is trashing around trying to survive in the post-print century. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch wants to wipe the Times off the map. Some believe he doesn't like the paper's culture and politics and he's using his new toy, the Wall Street Journal, along with huge profits from Fox to kill it. According to Gabriel Sherman, writing in New York Magazine and in conversation on WBUR's On Point, WSJ will be adding a new local and state section in order to catch up with and surpass the coverage already offered by the Times.
Rupert Murdoch is going for broke, perhaps literally. He has begun to invest in a process which will topple the Times and other credible information sources -- to rid the world of the liberal point of view, perhaps, or maybe just for fun -- and he's willing to invest heavily in the process, no matter how rational the investment. At the very least he's anti-establishment, a kind of anti-snob snob. It's Rupert the Australian throwing himself around in the precincts of the old world and showing them, by god, that he's worth more than they are.
New York Magazine writer Gabriel Sherman is admirer of Murdoch, not so much an admirer the New York Times. Here's part of his profile of Murdoch.
That's worth some worry time. Murdoch taking over the web?...Rupert Murdoch is not going anywhere. If anything, he’s been more active than ever, raging at his adversaries with the vigor of a man half his age. Over the last several months, he’s been waging a very public war with Google, trying to bend the freewheeling web according to his own rules. He successfully fought Time Warner to get the cable giant to cough up millions to broadcast his Fox affiliates. And he’s rebuilding The Wall Street Journal with an eye on destroying the New York Times, one of the most ancient of his enemies.
For Murdoch, these conflicts amount to holy missions. While others may see him as an opportunistic predator, ready to lay waste to whatever falls under his gaze, Murdoch sees himself as a moralist, the enemy of entrenched, arbitrary power. (Indeed, many of his newspaper wars, from the Times of London vs. the Daily Telegraph to the New York Post vs. the Daily News, have been financial debacles for both parties involved.) Google and the Times may be on opposite ends of the media spectrum, but they share an arrogance about their place in the world. And Murdoch, from the beginning, has found purpose in teaching such institutions hard lessons. Many see his pursuit of the Times as an irrational atavism, a figment of his past. Yet if the Times is going to fall, he wants not only to hasten its destruction but also to be there to dance on the rubble. ...
