It’s Murdoch day, apparently. Gawker gives a rundown of both the Times’s piece on Murdoch and the even longer Murdoch piece in The New Yorker today. The author of the post is less than impressed by the Times piece:
[T]he Times piece [is]… a head-scratcher. If, as suggested, it was rushed into print, we cannot understand why. As a prose document, it’s terribly disjointed, moving from one subject to the next without any sense of transition or logic. (The piece ends with an anecdote from a mid-eighties dinner party that is supposed to convey the dread that Journal employees feel about a possible takeover, but mainly makes you go, “Huh? That’s it?” And that’s after reading three thousand words. ) If the piece was supposed be a spine-stiffener for the Bancrofts, it’s a failure: There’s very little new here, save for a story from former F.C.C. Chairman Reed Hundt about how Murdoch’s chief lobbyist threatened to make Hundt’s life miserable if an FCC investigation went against News Corp. The usual stories are dredged up once again about Murdoch controlling politicians through lucrative (for the politicians) publishing contracts.