WASHINGTON -- Henry Regnery, the great publisher who founded the
Regnery Publishing house in the late 1940s, was at some point in
the early 1960s having lunch with Vermont Royster, the great editor
of the Wall Street Journal. They were kindred spirits, and
Regnery asked Royster his explanation for the Journal's
rise to eminence in the world of ink-stained wretches. Royster
replied that he always hired the "best minds" without regard to
trendiness or cost. The Wall Street Journal has continued
as the world's most credible news source and one that refused to
conform to the passing prejudice and error of the journalistic
herd.
Naturally the Journal receives ongoing abuse from the
herd for its distressing independence. Yet, rarely is the criticism
straightforward but rather an assault on the conservatism of the
Journal's editorial page, which strikes conformist
journalists as an affront and is the real cause of the herd's
distress. Rather the criticism focuses on the Journal's
bottom line, its sluggish share price, and rumors that the family
controlling the paper, the Bancroft family, is unhappy and about to
sell it.
The rumors of the Bancrofts' unhappiness are all highly
exaggerated and quickly refuted. For this proud family whose
ancestor, Clarence W. Barron, purchased the Journal and
with it the Dow Jones news service in 1902 conceives of its
ownership as a "public trust." That is how Roy A. Hammer, a lawyer
and trustee for the entities through which the Bancrofts control
the paper, described their sense of ownership. This is not so
unusual. Great newspapers have always played a major role in
American civic life. I said "great newspapers," not the tabs,
serious newspapers, the kind that put gathering news ahead of
sensationalism.
Most of the truly profitable newspapers in the country today are
essentially shopping circulars with some cheap journalism printed
on those pages not devoted to shopping mall sales. The great
newspaper chains take over local papers, fire journalists, and set
out to fill their pages with still more advertisements. Well, they
supply a service. They let readers know about the price, say, of
chicken at the Giant or snow tires at the CVS. But fewer and fewer
local newspapers supply much news and analysis. Great newspapers
do, and not one that I know of makes a vast amount of money.
Great newspapers do help to set the agenda for the nation. They
break stories of corruption or on other vital matters. One of the
few things I find admirable about the New York Times is
that its controlling family, the Sulzberger family, is not intent
on wringing every penny of profit out of its flagship paper. Thus
last week when I read a long critique in the Times of the
Wall Street Journal's management for its sluggish
financial performance, I sniffed hypocrisy.
The hypocrisy is all the greater coming from liberals who are
given to disparaging conservatives for their alleged devotion the
"Almighty Dollar." Profits are essential to all businesses. For one
thing they are a very accurate poll of the populace's tastes, but
there are other services some corporations supply to society. Both
the Journal and the Times supply -- at a steep
cost -- information that enlightens the citizenry. There are easier
ways to make money.
Yet, as I say, I doubt the criticism of the Journal
printed in the Times was really about the paper's bottom
line. It was about the conservatives who run the paper. The story
leaped with the utmost ardor on the Journal's chief
executive Peter Kann for supposedly being inert. Actually he is
stupendously active. Kann and the paper's former chairman, Warren
Phillips, pioneered in building the global Wall Street
Journal and in the enormous expansion of the company's wire
and online reporting staffs overseas. It has more news staff
outside the United States than any news source in the country.
During an era when even the Times has been rocked by
exposure of phony journalists the Journal's credibility
remains unsurpassed as does its professionalism.
Kann has overseen all this and the growth of the paper's
editorial page until it became the most influential in the country,
the main advocate of growth economics, a major investigator of
Clinton corruption, and the proponent of foreign policy ideas that
triumphed in the present administration. What is more, in a time of
declining circulation the Journal's subscribers remain
with it solidly. The Bancroft family is right. Its ownership of the
Wall Street Journal is a matter of public trust and it has
executed that trust superbly.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Business, Law, Conservatism
