As the rain falls on Monday morning, New York media and business watchers are waiting to see if News Corps' Rupert Murdoch will succeed in his attempts to buy The Wall Street Journal. As the Bancroft family, which holds the controlling interest in the company, meets over the next few days, at least one of the big media reporters, Ken Auletta, thinks that by week's end, the paper will be in Rupe's hands.
Sitting down to talk with Plum's Chris O'Connor on Saturday morning, Auletta said that he expects an announcement by the end of the week and that the deal will likely have both positive and negative effects on the paper.
"Murdoch said he won't change the paper," Auletta said, "but it is the nature of the man to intrude. The journalistic values he brings are tabloid values, and he uses his papers to advance his political or business interests."
That said, Auletta—who wrote a long piece in The New Yorker about the sale of the Journal—also recognizes the challenges facing the newspaper business right now, and he suspects Murdoch has the kind of vision that may, in the long run, help save the newspaper business. But even that isn't enough to assuage Auletta's "fear that The Journal will become a different paper."
Check out the full interview below:
Video
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