Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. faces no such hurdle in its pending deal to acquire the country's second-largest paper, Dow Jones & Co.'s The Wall Street Journal, even though it owns a broadcast TV network and a national cable news channel that blankets the U.S. Some Democrats contend that such national combinations should be scrutinized as well.

Rupert Murdoch's agreement last week to purchase Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the legendarily buttoned-down Wall Street Journal and Barron's, has served to multiply deep-seated concerns over his commitment to the high-quality business journalism for which the two publications are famous and over the future of newspaper journalism in America. A man whose U.S. properties include the screamingly irreverent tabloid New York Post and the Fox News Channel -- which many journalists see as making a mockery of its own slogan, "fair and balanced" -- cannot suddenly take on a mantle of respectability when it comes to delivering real, unbiased news, media observers say. At the same time, some wonder at the wisdom of his strategy of paying an over-the-top price for a stressed media company -- his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones is far higher than its recent market price -- and then expecting to make money on the deal in the long term.

Shares of Dow Jones & Co. skyrocketed nearly 55 percent yesterday on news that News Corp. had made an unsolicited offer to buy the publisher of The Wall Street Journal for $60 a share, valuing the deal at about $5 billion. The move would give Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., control of the highly respected business newspaper at a time when he also is building a new business television network, significantly adding to his global media empire.

Hey, Baltimore's a great place! It says so right there in Frommer's, the popular travel guide. Last week, it rated Baltimore as one of the top 10 "up-and-coming" summer travel destinations in the whole world! Charm City is right there with Barcelona and Belize, the Catskills in New York and the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. This comes on the heels of kudos to the Queen City of the Patapsco from another noted trend-spotting publication - The Wall Street Journal. Last Wednesday, in the coveted upper-left-hand corner of Page One was publicity all the promotional money in the world can't buy. The story - dateline BALTIMORE - told of a house bought for $77,000 a year ago that, after a bit of renovation, sold recently for $300,000.

WASHINGTON - The long war over judicial nominations comes to a head in the Senate this week, but opinion polls show that outside the Beltway, the focus is on issues much closer to home. The disconnect seems to be souring many Americans on the people they sent here to represent them. "The big theme of public opinion about Congress this year has been that they're not really addressing the issues that people really care about, and that goes for both parties," said Carroll Doherty, director of research at the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, which released a poll last week showing poor approval ratings for lawmakers in both parties.

LIFE IS TOO short, Ken Wells says, to drink dull beer. "It is a big, happy world out there, with a lot of pale ales and lagers. I really encourage people to become more experimental," Wells said. This belief that a fellow should drink around is one of the insights Wells came up with after he traveled around the United States sipping suds and thinking about beer. The result of his efforts is Travels With Barley (Wall Street Journal Books, 2004, $25), a look at American beer culture. After reading this book, I called up the author to talk with him some more about our mutual interest, beer.

WASHINGTON - President Bush received a significant bump in the polls in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's capture, with more Americans approving of his job as president and fewer doubting his Iraq policy. But how long will it last? Analysts say the president, who seeks re-election next fall, is sitting pretty for the moment, with the nation's economy on a major rebound and Iraq's former president seized and under interrogation. But they add the important caveat that if violence in Iraq rages on and American casualties mount, Bush could still face criticism of his war policy that will resonate with voters.

Any good editor - and it's widely agreed that Paul E. Steiger is one - would cringe at the phrase "roller coaster ride," especially if it were being used to describe what his newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, has gone through in the past two years. For one thing, it's a cliche. For another, it's inaccurate. Roller coaster rides have some amusing stretches. Roller coaster rides don't leave scars. Roller coasters, as a rule, don't descend into the depths of hell. Again and again since 2001, it has seemed as if that's where Steiger and his staff were.

From the beginning, Daniel Pearl was determined to be a business reporter. When he showed up in the summer of 1988 for a job interview at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass., he told the editors interviewing him that he wanted to cover business, not government or courts. He had done some business writing at The Transcript, a small daily in North Adams, Mass., but it was his enthusiasm, intelligence and quiet confidence that got him the job at the larger Eagle at the age of 24. Pearl covered the local business scene in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts for two years under the watchful eye of Lewis Cuyler Jr., the Eagle's veteran business editor, who had spotted his work in The Transcript.

AN EDITOR once told Angelo Henderson that he wasn't cut out for journalism. Henderson, who is African-American, spent years feeling underappreciated and alienated as a reporter, says a story in the Columbia Journalism Review. Then in 1999, a few years after joining the Wall Street Journal, Henderson won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. His story had a happy ending. But many other minority journalists have not received the kind of encouragement that Henderson finally found at the Wall Street Journal.