Goodbye Old Friend

I am mourning the loss of a good friend. I have been saddened as I have seen a slow. progressive decline.It has been difficult for me to put into words the way that I have felt.   I first seriously began reading The Wall Street Journal in the 1970's when I was a struggling copywriter, then private detective living in New York. I started picking up spare copies left on the subway, local bars and the train stations. After a while, I began to enjoy the front page, as it summarized the news of the day, and always had a feature of real interest. The writing was crisp, intelligent and persuasive. I went so far as to  budget and  purchase daily copies at the newsstand along with the New York Times. We became good friends, the three of us. The WSJ gave me the news and information I needed during the week, on the weekend, the Gray Lady would take me all over the world with it's reporting, analysis, arts, culture and food. I was a happy (young) man.

Over the years, I have lived in many other cities, some big and some small but each of these friends remained with me. Then, 3 short years ago, my friend, The Wall Street Journal, was exposed to a dangerous and spreading malaise. It's origin is thought to be Australia although it is now firmly attached to the United States. It is known as the Murdoch Syndrome...Yes, on August of 2007, the Dow Jones & Company, a family owned business for over a century was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. It was a typical case of money being thrown at the victim, with a huge premium being paid over the stock's par value. The prognosis was "nothing would change" but, everyone knew this wasn't true. Any reader of the New York Post could attest to that. Soon, the WSJ began to politicize it's already conservative (but well reasoned) editorial page,  then the news, then the features... Any recent time spent with my old friend is a sad re-enactment of Fox News (which is another of the Murdoch syndrome victims). A constant drum beat of dangerously slanted information, well screened and chopped into little bites for newly initiated readers, with little or no sense of what has happened in the past, soon followed. Just today, I had finally seen the end and I said goodbye old friend, I knew you when you were great, it is so sad to see you now. I am sure you will understand, you wouldn't want your friends to see you this way.