Read any good stories in the New York Herald lately?
How about the New York Tribune? Or even the New York
Herald Tribune?
Unless you’re reading microfilm copies in some dusty back corner
of a New York library, the answer presumably is no.
In a related vein, what do you think the foreign policy of the
newest Roman Caesar will be when it comes to dealing with Islamic
terrorism? And what about John McCain’s chances of being Queen
Elizabeth’s new Prime Minister?
The answer to these questions is of course obvious. The
Herald folded in 1924, merging with its rival the
Tribune. The combined Herald Tribune ceased
publication in 1966 (except for a European version, the
International Herald Tribune now owned by the New York
Times). There is no foreign policy towards Islamic terrorism
from a Roman Caesar because the Roman Empire no longer exists.
First emerging somewhere between 44 and 27 B.C. (depending on
whether you begin with Julius Caesar or his immediate successors),
it divided into Western and Eastern sections with the Western
Empire falling apart during the fifth and sixth centuries. The
Eastern Empire fell prey to the Ottomans in the 1400s, and with
that the last of the Roman Empire disappeared forever. Whatever
John McCain’s political future holds, he is a candidate not for
Prime Minister of Great Britain but President of the United States
because the policies of Queen Elizabeth’s famous ancestor King
George III lost the British colonies in America for good back in
1781.
The fate of these once famous and powerful institutions should
serve as cautionary tales to the Bancroft family, the owners of the
Wall Street Journal. The Bancrofts are now struggling
quite publicly among themselves over an attractive offer for their
Dow Jones family empire from media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his
powerful News Corporation.
As one of millions of Journal> readers who loves the
paper (and as a writer who has been published on its pages), this
is a struggle worth watching.
Once upon a time, New York’s Herald and
Tribune, the Roman Empire, the British colonies in America
and, yes, even John McCain’s inevitability as the Republican
presidential nominee in 2008 were taken for granted. If you were
alive in the 1860s the Tribune, owned by the eccentric
Horace Greeley, circulated throughout the United States, its
publisher so powerful and influential he later became a
presidential candidate. In the 1880s the Herald, born in
1835, was the largest circulation newspaper in New York City,
flamboyantly financing Henry Morton Stanley’s expedition into
Africa to search for Dr. David Livingstone. For centuries the Roman
Empire reigned over the majority of earth as it was then known,
leaders ruling a domain that at its peak extended from Britain to
North Africa to the Middle East and the tip of Asia. The English
set foot in the wilds of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and Plymouth,
Massachusetts, in 1620. From those moments until British General
Lord Cornwallis allegedly heard the tune “The World Turned Upside
Down” played at the 1781 Yorktown, Virginia surrender of his army
to George Washington, the idea of America as just one more English
colony in a British empire where the sun never set was part of the
bedrock of Britain’s view of itself. And only seven months ago the
Republican Establishment was swarming the McCain campaign,
convinced that the Bush era was giving way at last to the
inevitability of the Age of McCain.
The shock of recognition for human beings alive in all of these
periods of history is that, simply put, nothing has to last
forever, and nothing is inevitable. Nothing. Not the New York
Herald or Tribune, not the Roman Empire or the idea
of America as a British colony or the nomination of John McCain. Or
even the control of the Wall Street Journal by the
Bancroft family.
All of these moments in history remind us that change is
inevitable — one of the most obvious yet frequently ignored
lessons of life. Change arrives twenty-four hours a day of every
day of life on this planet. No creation of a human being or any
collection of human beings is guaranteed to be here tomorrow or
even an hour from now — unless those in a position of leadership
are alert to the changes around them and are actively and
intelligently getting out in front of those changes.
Rupert Murdoch’s rise from publisher of a small paper in
Adelaide, Australia, to the powerful mogul whose media empire
bestrides the globe as a communications colossus was made possible
in part because Murdoch had a crystal clear vision of where he was
headed, had the guts to continually embrace change and risk, and
worked tirelessly to understand the nitty-gritty of his business.
The story is told in one Murdoch biography (Murdoch by
William Shawcross) that shortly after purchasing London’s
Sun he decided to have it printed as a tabloid. Told by
his printers that the broadsheet presses he owned could not print a
tabloid, Murdoch informed his employees that their printing presses
were originally supplied with bars designed to fold pages to
tabloid size. The head printer, Shawcross reports, denied this.
Whereupon the publisher removed his suit coat and jumped up onto
the press. “In a box at the top of the machine,” writes Shawcross,
Murdoch “found the bar in question wrapped in sacking and covered
in ink and grime. The printers were impressed.”
Murdoch, in other words, knew his business in detail. In all the
volumes of ink detailing the angst of the Bancroft family as they
struggle with the idea of selling what they understandably consider
to be the family crown jewel, a reader never gets the sense that
there is a Bancroft family member who understands about the bar
that folds broadsheet pages to tabloid size. Behind arguments that
the family has left the running of its paper to others is a
doubtless unintended yet implicit intimation that were Murdoch and
his offer to disappear, eventually the Wall Street Journal
itself could disappear. How, after all, did it get to the point
where Murdoch or anyone else could feel free to make a serious
offer for it in the first place? Most assuredly no one is trying to
buy the News Corporation out from under the Murdoch family. It
appears to an outsider that the Journal has arrived at
this moment because there is no Bancroft family member with the
drive, the vision, and the knowledge of the nitty-gritty to make
the changes this famous American institution needs to survive in
the 21st century of the New Media. Rather, the working assumption
seems to be that of a passive Herald or Tribune
publisher or a complacent Caesar of the Roman Empire or an arrogant
King George III or a cocky John McCain adviser. The Wall Street
Journal will live forever. It is inevitable, for no other
reason than that it “always” has.
This simply isn’t so.
The underlying assumption of some sort of earthly eternity for
man-made creations of any kind is not just wrong, it is dangerous
to the health and wellbeing of whatever creation is under
discussion. Any person responsible for a treasured or valuable
family inheritance can sympathize with the Bancrofts and their
struggle. But it seems that there is no one in their midst who
understands what Rupert Murdoch grasped at a very early age back in
Adelaide. Life is short, and change is life itself. If you fail to
aggressively anticipate change, take risks and keep moving forward
— resting on your laurels or, worse, the laurels of your ancestors
— pretty soon you won’t have a newspaper at all. Or an empire or a
colony or even a presidential nomination.
The world can indeed be turned upside down. Whatever the outcome
of the struggle inside the Bancroft family, the world of the
Wall Street Journal is apparently in the middle of that
process right now, doubtless generating millions of good wishes
from its faithful readers for the continued health and vibrant
future of a genuine American icon.
