Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

Sorry to link to a Romy link again, but the guy needs his meds. Some CJR typist insists SLIME will bring about "the end of Dow Jones". "And make no mistake: Tuesday was a black day for journalism, and an even blacker one for financial journalism." Why? We hate to go into the obvious, but we think we know why: SLIME will FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!IFY the Journals, He'll fire the entire Liberal Edition staff and replace it with Brits and Neils, and NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN COUGHLIN for good measure, and He'll have everybody going knee-jerk lock step SIEG-HEIL! neo-Nazi far-right CONSERVATIVE, AND...

This is the sort of BS hacks spew when the world's not going their way. SLIME, whatever His faults, is not about to tamper with a successful -- FRANCHISE (he helped invent the word), and face it, for their many flaws, the Journals are successful because they're two newspapers, both pandering to their respective audiences. Why spoil a good thing like that?

"When this is over," this simp mourns, "there will be no independent publisher of the nation’s foremost—really only—watchdog of the capital markets, corporate behavior, and regulators’ conduct. Who’s going to cover News Corp.?" Setting aside the question, "Who covers News Corp. now?" (an exceptionally gifted recipient of the fruits of news-hack social climbing, with the Journals no doubting having perpetrated at least their share), if watchdogging means P-Ulitzer winners looking for suicides at supermarket chains, that's an ultimately toothless watchdog. Lest we forget the Journals were the home of the notorious show-biz press agent Laura Landro, who invented the term suck-up; and some "Heard on the Street" columnist who investigated his way to prison for profitably using his connections. Remember when the Journals got in trouble for running press releases virtually unedited? And where has this mutt been through all the weeping and moaning of the Journals slashing their staffs and cutting their newshole and trimming the pages? And does anyone really expect business news outlets to go after people -- except when they have PR men and books to sell? Perhaps the problem is SLIME's big bonanza underlines that the Journals, in many ways, are unnecessary, with so many news outlets running numbers and charts and business press releases; and Dow Jones proved its necessity further with its boneheaded purchase of Marketwatch.com. But how can a CJR typist talk of necessity when CJR has become ever less necessary itself?