NEWSWEEK: Murdoch's Wall Street Journal Set to Challenge New York Times; Bloomberg Associates Encouraging Mayor to Buy the Times

When readers open their Wall Street Journals Monday morning, they will discover a newspaper fashioned to the tastes of the man who revolutionized media markets from Australia to North America. With its increased focus on politics, international news, culture and sports, Rupert Murdoch's reconceived Journal represents nothing short of a formal declaration of war on that most venerable of journalistic institutions, The New York Times, Newsweek reports in the current issue. The fight could escalate in unknown ways if billionaire New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg ends up acquiring the Times. As Newsweek has learned, top associates of the onetime information executive are encouraging him to do just that.

In Newsweek interviews last week, a member of Bloomberg's inner circle confirmed that the mayor's confidants and closest associates are, in fact, encouraging him to explore the idea of a Bloomberg-New York Times merger, reports senior writer Johnnie Roberts in the April 28 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 21). The Bloomberg source wasn't authorized to
publicly discuss the matter and, as a result, insisted on anonymity.

Through a spokesman, Bloomberg declined to comment. According to the source, the proponents of the merger are appealing to the mayor's sense of "civic-mindedness," arguing that he is best suited to take the publishing company private to "help protect the brand" in the wake of relentless shareholder assaults. "It is clearly a brand that Bloomberg could help preserve and that he cares about immensely ... and could pay a competitive price" for, says this person.

Murdoch, for one, sees a natural fit between Bloomberg and the Journal's uptown rival. Bloomberg, he notes, has pledged to remain a force in national public life after leaving New York's city hall at the end of next year. To that end, owning the Times would help immensely, Murdoch reasons. Yet the prospect of competing against a Bloomberg-owned Times
appears to rattle him. "I wouldn't look forward to going up against him," Murdoch tells Newsweek, citing his "great respect for Bloomberg's business abilities."

Roberts also looks at whom Murdoch will support for president and whether The Wall Street Journal, which hasn't endorsed a candidate since Herbert Hoover, will do so now. Murdoch's New York Post not only endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in New York's primary, but it also criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton, with whom it was assumed Murdoch was now friendly.

Why did Murdoch turn cold on Clinton? "She's been a good senator for New York," he told Newsweek recently. "It doesn't mean she'd make a good president." While he lauds Clinton's "terrific mastery of details and issues," Murdoch says, "I'm against a lot of her big national issues."

He says he's worried that the senator will make the United States more of "a dependency society" like the United Kingdom was before Margaret Thatcher, of whom he was an ardent supporter. "Government should not be too big," he says. Interpretation: Clinton, despite her centrist message, remains too liberal for Murdoch. Clinton's camp rejects the view. "I don't
know what evidence he has to that effect," Harold Ickes, a Clinton strategist, told Newsweek on Friday. "I don't know what he would look to in terms of her policies that she's proposing that he could draw that conclusion." As for the Post's nod to Obama, that appears to have been a
calculated attempt by Murdoch to do his part to prolong a great horse race. "I said, 'Let's make a race of it'," he said.

Many media-industry watchers, journalists and communications experts argue that the Journal will never pose much of a threat to the Times's franchise, Roberts reports. In fact, the changes could damage the Journal brand. "Turning a paper into an old-fashioned variety show -- we have a little of everything -- I don't think is the route to success," says a former senior Dow Jones executive. "The risk you run is that you are not best at anything." But the same critics also warn that "it's never a good time to have to confront someone like Murdoch, who doesn't care about making money on a particular product," says newspaper analyst John Morton.

New York Times CEO Janet Robinson says that the Times is prepared for the confrontation with Murdoch. "The New York Times," she told analysts, "has had broad coverage for 156 years now, and from that perspective we are far advanced in the type of journalism we create and the
type of advertising we bring into the paper."

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Chevron's Costly, Double-Page Ad is Deceptive, Says Group

Ordinary citizens who spotted Chevron Corp's two-page color ad in the New York Times Monday could only wonder what it meant, since it's obviously not aimed at consumers. The ad mimics the desktop of a busy corporate executive, littered with notes about oil demand and oil flow around the world, plus a checklist of Chevron's good deeds.

One answer is right on Chevron's website in a press release saying the company's ad campaign, which ran last year and is being renewed as the new Congress gets down to work, is "targeted at influentials who are involved with leading the energy debate."

That means Congress and the Bush administration, says the Foundation For Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR), which criticized the ads as deceptive by omission. As Chevron and other oil companies face the loss of tax breaks in the new Congress and investigations of price gouging in last summer's record gasoline prices, the ad tries to shift the discussion, the organization says. The global market in oil, says the ad, is "a world of rising demand, supply disruption, natural disasters and unstable regimes."


Such language absolves Chevron and other major oil companies of their own responsibility for "supply disruptions" in the gasoline market, which are due in large part to the industry's restriction of refining capacity even when, as in last year's price spike, there was no lack of availablecrude oil, says FTCR. The price spike equaled -- and in California exceeded-- the prices following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, despite the utter lack of such weather disasters nationwide last year, the group says.


The ad also aims to forestall congressional criticism of questionable foreign oil investments by California-based Chevron, arguing that oil investment should be allowed to "flow freely across borders," FTCR says. Chevron praises itself for "developing energy through partnerships with 26 countries."


"Those 26 countries would include Nigeria, where Chevron's ties with brutal security forces and broken economic promises to people near its oil fields have been strongly rebuked by human rights organizations," says Judy Dugan, research director of FTCR. "And Ecuador, where Chevron's toxic drilling wastes polluted regional water sources and triggered a lawsuit by indigenous tribes whose children are said to suffer four times the leukemia rate of unaffected areas.


"Chevron, aside from trying to shift the discussion away from its own behavior in the gasoline market, appears to be intent on quelling any trade regulation that might restrict its dealings with abusive regimes," says Dugan.




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