The Los Angeles Times’s Timothy Rutten, self-appointed guardian-of-the-morals-and-ethics of our Fourth Estate, today writes a biased piece concerning the perceived chutzpa of Rupert Murdoch, taking him to task for talking to the Bancroft family with a view to buying the Wall Street Journal. Read it here.
Now I have little sympathy for Murdoch, ever since his esteemed London Times organ ran the original story planted by my ex-wife Lynn Redgrave “outing” me after a 32 year marriage, and ran a Page 6 style article with no warning. I was assuaged somewhat ever since discovering that he too got divorced after a 32 year marriage and subsequently married a much younger Asian, just like me (although I don’t think he publicly outed himself.)
But methinks one detects the deadly sin of envy. Murdoch (a U.S. citizen, not just a resident as Rutten misinforms) makes a profit. The L.A. Times does not. Instead, to cut mounting costs, we coincidentally read today that a large contingent of their best and brightest were shown the door, leaving a residual guard fearful no doubt of being pink-slipped in the shrinking world of legacy newsgathering.
And so one should re-read Rutten’s piece, substituting his own paper’s name for the WSJ. Perhaps he’s wishing that Murdoch had made a sooner approach to the family Chandler. After all, there is a fit, a similar Page 6 covey awaiting under the assumed name Calendar.