No run today — 10 miles on the bike and 3,000 meters on the rower to finish up the crosstraining.
Today’s iPod selection: Lucinda Williams’ West
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More and more on the Murdoch bid for Dow Jones.
Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
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I’ve been remiss on this, but I did five miles today outdoors. A bit cooler than I expected, but I had a vest on and worked up quite the sweat. Listened to the new Artic Monkeys‘ disc, Favourite Worst Nightmare (a review to follow later this week, once I digest it) on the iPod.
No run on Monday — 4,000 meters on the rower and 10 miles on the bike.
As for last week, I finished up with a four-mile run on Thursday and a three-mile run on Friday for 19 miles total for the week.
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I’ve been following this story — “News Corp. Makes a Bid for Dow Jones” — with a bit of trepidation, partly for personal reasons and partly because of what a Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal might mean for the industry and the Journal itself.
On the personal side, my wife works for Dow Jones on the business side and any sale could have major ramifications for the workforce. Basically, I have no idea of a sale would mean layoffs or what it would do to her benefit package — the uncertainty is a bit scary.
As for the industry, the bigger Murdoch gets, the more his brand of tabloid-style journalism spreads. Right now, the Journal news pages are among the finest in the business, offering a level of in-depth reporting found few other places.
Just as important, as Ari Berman points out in The Nation’s Notion blog, a sale to Murdoch could mean the end of the Journal’s impressive separation of news and opinion — the extremely conservative editorial page has no bearing on the reporting elsewhere in the paper.
Murdoch is known for pushing his publications, such as the once-liberal New York Post, to the right. Under Murdoch’s purview, would the news pages of the Wall Street Journal become more like its conservative editorial section?
I am hopeful that the announcement that the announcement by the Bancroft family at 4:30 today that the family, which owns a controlling interest in the company, “will vote shares constituting slightly more than 50 percent of the outstanding voting power of Dow Jones … against the proposal submitted by News Corporation.”
The Journal and Dow Jones have their problems. I just don’t see how Murdoch is the solution.
Jeff Jarvis isn’t so sure. Here is his BuzzMachine item on the potential sale.
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He doesn’t want deadlines for withdrawal because that will tell the enemy what America’s plans are. But if U.S. soldiers aren’t going to leave by 2008, when are they going to get out? The obvious implication here is this: The president expects them to stay in Iraq for a very long time to come. The only way he can see to justify the losses so far is to keep fighting.
In April alone, the war took 100 American lives and cost about $9 billion. Yesterday, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction reported on one little corner of the war effort – but it’s a little corner that seems emblematic of the whole enterprise. His inspectors looked at eight completed construction projects, paid for by the U.S. – not a representative sample, because most projects are in areas that are too dangerous to visit, but just eight projects that could be assessed. They found that seven were structural failures.
This is what Americans are getting for their blood and treasure. Failure, failure, success, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure. In the four years since President Bush put on that Navy flight suit and headed out on his mission before the cameras, his administration has accomplished almost nothing in Iraq, and now argues that that is the very reason U.S. soldiers and Marines must stay there and keep fighting and dying.
The Record of Hackensack makes similar points in its editorial:
The fourth anniversary of the “mission accomplished” speech is a grim reminder of thousands of lives needlessly lost. Unless Bush shifts course, the nation will be mired in Iraq for the fifth anniversary as well.
The mission that needs to be accomplished is to bring the troops home.
Yes. “Bring ‘Em Home,” as The Boss sings on this Pete Seeger tune. Bring ’em home.
Hank Kalet 