The Murdoch Charm Offensive Hits New York

The Rupert Murdoch charm offensive hits the New York Times today, which features a long interview with the man himself. And give him credit: he says all the right things.

He's modest in the face of WSJ brand-name journalism, claiming that he doesn't always understand Walt Mossberg perfectly. Of course he does always understand Mossberg – the whole point of Mossberg is that he's easy to understand – but it's polite to feign ignorance.

On the other hand, he's open about the fact that he wants to shake up the WSJ newsroom:

We’re not coming in with a bunch of cost-cutters,” he said, but added: “I’m not saying it’s going to be a holiday camp for everybody.”

And as far as his dealings with the Bancroft family are concerned, he knows exactly what it's like to run a family business.

The [Bancroft] family, which owns 64 percent of the voting shares, has said that 52 percent of those voting shares oppose Mr. Murdoch’s offer. They have not answered any of his invitations to meet with him and his sons, James and Lachlan, and a daughter, Elisabeth.
“My real intention is to try to get a meeting, not to impress them with my charm — if I have any — but to impress them with the intentions and feelings of my adult children,” Mr. Murdoch said...
While he said he still hopes to address the family as a group, Mr. Murdoch said he did not personally plan to start to lobby any individual shareholders on the fence...
“I don’t want to be in a position of putting one Bancroft against another Bancroft. I’m not in the business of stirring up trouble in the family,” he said. “Our understanding is that there are several members of the family who have not made a final decision,” he said. “I think the next step for us is to be patient — and to be available at anytime should they respond to my suggestion for a meeting.”
And if a large majority of the family ended up clearly rejecting his bid? “It would be ugly — depending on your perspective, it might be admirable too,” Mr. Murdoch said.

This is really pitch-perfect stuff. He's not pretending to be someone he's not, but at the same time he's being very reasonable and respectful towards the Bancrofts.

The one piece of real news in the interview comes with Rupert explaining exactly what he means by "editorial independence":

While Mr. Murdoch went to great pains to explain that he sees himself as a lifelong newspaperman who learned journalism from his father in Australia, he also tried to say that his reputation as an interloper owner was overstated. He said he was not involved with the news operations of the higher-end newspapers, although he takes a closer role in tabloids like The Sun in London and The New York Post.
And he said he would propose to the Bancrofts setting up a separate board for the newspaper, mandated with ensuring its editorial independence, as he has done since he acquired The Times and Sunday Times in 1981.
He said the independent board works, recalling that “The Sunday Times came out loudly for the decapitation of Margaret Thatcher,” whom he had personally supported. He said, “I didn’t know about it,” and then joked, “I pretended I hadn’t read it.”

Again, this is pretty much true, although it surely falls short of what the Bancrofts would like. Murdoch doesn't interfere with his upmarket newspapers as much as he does with his downmarket newspapers (we can't call them "tabloids" any more, because the Times is now tabloid too). On the other hand, he certainly interferes with them much more than anybody at the WSJ would want to be interfered with.

You want to know whether Murdoch will succeed in buying Dow Jones? All you need to do is look at the stock price. It's still up over $55, which means it's pricing in a successful takeover bid. If it falls back down to $35, you'll know the Murdoch bid is washed up.