Talk:The Wall Street Journal/Archive 2

Ed. Position: Social issues
I added the Journal's opposition towards same-sex marriage. I think it's important for people to know. Responding to some dude above, though I too wish it were classically liberal like the Economist, the WSJ Ed. page is made up of (generally speaking) American conservatives.

I remembered that the Jernal also supported indefinite imprisonment of and/or torture of accused terrorists. Added that. If you want to change it, please discuss it HERE, FIRST, and don't just go and delete my stuff.

--User:Zaorish


 * How is their opposition to same-sex marriage relevant?


 * I read OpinionJournal.com regularly, and the Wall St. Journal editorial page occasionally, and this issue has never struck me as being one of their primary concerns.


 * Foisting amnesty on a reluctant public, editorializing against excessive spending by Congress and budgetary boondoggles like Medicare Part D, highlighting human rights abuses by regimes in Cuba, North Korea, and to a lesser extent, Venuzuela...


 * Thwarting the imposition of same-sex marriage is a tertiary issue for them, and that's being charitable.


 * In fact, most people would be hard-pressed to identify a populist or socially conservative stand that their editorial page is strongly identified with.


 * Paul Gigot, Dorothy Rabinowitz, John Fund, Tunku Varadarajan, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, none of these individuals are associated with the fight against litigation seeking the imposition of same-sex marriage.


 * It wasn't even a huge priority for Peggy Noonan, the last time I checked.

Ruthfulbarbarity 05:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Edit: In retrospect, I think I might have underplayed the role of Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who has written several op-eds supporting a Federal Marriage Amendment, or in opposition to the concept of judicially-imposed same-sex marriage.


 * Notwithstanding that fact, it still strikes me as a minor issue in the vast universe that is the Wall St. Journal editorial page.

Ruthfulbarbarity 05:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

It is misleading and unfair to assert that the WSJ supports the torture of "wartime combatants." First of all, that formulation includes all enemy combatants from any country, however civilised. Of course the WSJ would not support anything remotely like the torture of real soldiers from Britain or France or any other country. Second, the WSJ certainly did not support the Abu Ghraib incident, a case of real torture (although nothing compared with the beating and decapitation of civilian reporters by Muslim fanatics), nor any other case of clear-cut torture. The editorial page may support the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, repeated questioning, and the cause of uninjurious discomfort to detained prisoners, but the status of these detainees is in question, and to represent the WSJ's position as a "justification of the use of torture against wartime enemies" is illogical and misleading. You added that the Journal supported torturing wartime enemies, yet you believe that it supports indefinite imprisonment/ torture of terrorists? These are not the same thing my friend. Soonersfan168 06:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Good Article
This article has been passed as a Good Article. I thought it was comprehensive, well-written, and well structured. I think that more citations in the history and editorial sections would do the article good (so keep that in mind :]), but I thought that it was sourced well enough to pass. Cheers! --Keitei (talk) 06:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

GA Re-Review and In-line citations
''Note: This article has a small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and subject content. Currently it would not pass criteria 2b.'' Members of the WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 04:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Daily Cost
All the newspaper articles don't have what the price per issue is. How much does the WSJ cost per day? --70.111.218.254 02:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * A difficult question to answer. As I recall, the Journal's price varies from location to location. Here in New England, it's $1.00 per copy -- but that's a recent increase from (if memory serves) 75 cents. I seem to recall seeing the Journal sold for $1.00 in other parts of the country years ago. Does anyone have a list? Wiki Wistah 17:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The "A-Hed"
I was surprised to see nothing included about the A-Hed, the often quirky stories that are usually in column four on the front page. BlankVerse 09:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Picture
Update the picture, it has been reformatted.

Socialist reporters
It's important to distinguish clearly between the news sections and the editorial sections. Whether you call the news sections liberal or something else, they are completely different.

Here's an excerpt from an article by A. Kent MacDougall, who retired to teach journalism school, and famously wrote a few articles about how, as a socialist, he could write with complete freedom at the WSJ. This is from a source that has a strong POV antagonistic to socialism, but it's a (mostly) fair and accurate summary of the articles in Monthly Review, which I read but can't find on the Internet. If nobody has any objection, I'd like to mention this in the entry. More recently, the WSJ won many Pulitzer Prizes for stories that were similarly critical of the system, and I'd like to link to them to demonstrate what you can describe or not describe as liberal reporting. Nbauman 21:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

http://www.mrc.org/mediawatch/1989/watch19890101.asp From the January 1989 MediaWatch Reporter Admits He's A Marxist "Eugene V. Debs may be my all-time favorite American and Karl Marx my all-time favorite journalist," former Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times reporter A. Kent MacDougall proclaimed recently. In November and December articles for the Monthly Review, "an independent socialist magazine," he explained that as a "closet socialist boring unobtrusively from within," he had little trouble promoting Marxist ideas in his news stories. How did someone who also wrote articles for the American Socialist and communist Daily Worker manage this? MacDougall reasoned "that while newspaper owners and editors don't go out looking for stories that make the capitalist system look bad, the best don't flinch from running such stories if they meet mainstream journalistic standards for accuracy and objectivity." During his days at the Journal from 1962 to 1972 MacDougal "took full advantage of the latitude Journal reporters have to pick their own feature story topics and report on them in depth." MacDougall proudly recalled how he "introduced readers to the ideas of radical historians, radical economists...in sympathetic page-one stories." "I made sure to seek out experts whose opinions I knew in advance would support my thesis," he boasted, and "sought out mainstream authorities to confer recognition and respectability on radical views I sought to popularize." In 1977 the Times hired MacDougall as a "special business correspondent" able to pick his own stories. "I lost no time making it obvious where my sympathies lay," MacDougall reported, noting that "of the first dozen stories I wrote for the Times, one profiled the leftist magazine Mother Jones and two others profiled Marxist economists." In the early 1980's MacDougall got an opportunity to write a series that offered a Marxist explanation as to "why the United States is among the least equal of mature capitalist economies." Times editors nominated it for a Pulitzer Prize. MacDougall left the Times in 1987 to find a new vehicle for his views: "I picked up a pension (opposing the system is no reason to pass up an opportunity to make it work for one) and joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley" where "tenure gives me the luxury of coming out of the ideological closet at last."


 * Here's a better source: Confessions of A Closet Leftist, Time magazine, Monday, Feb. 06, 1989 By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN Nbauman 03:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Here's another one: To March or Not to March Sunday, Jun. 24, 2001 By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN


 * An equally troubling -- and more elusive -- issue is whether journalists can cover stories in which they begin with strong personal convictions. A. Kent MacDougall, a journalism professor at the University of California, Berkeley, marched against the Viet Nam War while working on the staff of the Wall Street Journal. Defending his activities in a 1970 Journal op-ed piece, MacDougall wrote, "A well-trained reporter with pride in his craft won't allow his beliefs to distort his stories, any more than a Republican surgeon will botch an appendectomy on a Democrat."


 * Nbauman 04:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * And here's an account by MaDougall himself:


 * Boring within the bourgeois press: a postcript - memoir of a socialist reporter working for the capitalist press Monthly Review,Jan, 1990 by A. Kent MacDougall  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nbauman (talk • contribs) 07:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

"and other related things"
What does this mean? --Gbleem 16:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It's meaningless padding. You can have the pleasure of deleting it. Nbauman 19:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Jim Cramer's Wall Street Journal "Bozos"
Anyone care for a "controversy" section in this advert of an entry? This is pretty heavy stuff:


 * "You have to use these guys," said Cramer, whose track record managing $450 million at his hedge fund Cramer :Berkowitz was a robust 24 percent average annual return.
 * Shortly after mentioning Pisani, he also discussed giving information to "the bozo reporter from The Wall Street :Journal" to get an article published.

from http://www.nypost.com/seven/03212007/business/cramers_big_mouth_business_roddy_boyd.htm

Editorial Line and comparisons with "The Economist"
The "liberal bias" study was put under the "editorial line" title, which is clearly incorrect as the study itself states that it only refers to the news pages, so I moved it to its own section.

Another change that I believe warrants some discussion:

There is a comparison made between the WSJ editorial line and The Economist's, which frankly made me cringe. The article outlines some differeces, but I believe the differences are broader than just those few specific examples provided. Namely, in domestic issues the WSJ tends to take views that are consistently favorable to the GOP whereas The Economist takes a more balanced view. I believe the comparison is unfair in that it makes the WSJ appear less partisan than it actually is. I propose one of these alternatives:

1) Remove the comparison with The Economist altogether (my preferred choice). It is an arbitrary comparison, and since there are many dissimilarities, I believe it is an unhelpful comparison.

2) Add another caveat saying that the two disagree on many politically charged issues where the WSJ tends to lean GOP and The Economist takes a more balanced view. If we want examples:

a) corruption scandals need to be thoroughly investigated in the Clinton administration, but recent investigations of leaking a CIA agent's name, or the Gonzalez hearings are "witchhunts"

b) the WSJ endorsed (without specifically using the word "endorse") Bush in 2000 and 2004. The Economist did not endorse Bush in 2004 (and I'm pretty sure they didn't endorse him in 2000 either), and in 2004 called Bush "incompetent" as it endorsed Kerry

c)The economist takes a balanced view of global warning whereas the WSJ continually denies it, having gone as far as using a snowstorm that hit NYC in December 2002 (I believe) in an editorial as evidence that global warming is a fiction (!!!??). This one always makes me laugh, because the same editorial board went on to condemn the US Supreme Court in 2007 for somehow not knowing what they were talking about in their recent global warming ruling.

I don't propose using these examples in the article, as it could start a whole new discussion (maybe it should be a separate article on the WSJ editorial slants, but that's a different story). But I do think the differences between the two publications are broader and deeper than the article lets on and we should either delete the comparison or acknowledge the broader differences.

Also - I'm pretty sure I posted this before and it got deleted by someone. If you disagree with this posting by all means argue the point, but don't delete it.

Marc Marcpitt 00:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC) April 2007


 * I think it would be fine to include a discussion of the editorial line of the WSJ as you describe. Under Wikipedia rules, you have to find a reliable source to say that.


 * I don't think anyone deleted your comments (you can check History to find out0, but if they did it is a serious violation of WP rules to delete comments from Talk, and they can get locked out of WP for doing so repeatedly. Nbauman 01:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

citing the WSJ as a reference
Is it possible to link to WSJ.com as a reference when you need a log-in to read articles on the site? JMS1225 20:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * What I'd do in that place would be to create the link, but provide enough information in the citation that someone could find the article in the print edition, as many big-city libraries carry WSJ on microfiche. As for WSJ's Web-only content ... I guess a pay-to-play citation is better than no citation at all, but the best practice is to find something available free, if you can. ``` W i k i W i s t a h W a s s a p ``` 15:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Dow Jones Takeover
The Wall Street Journal is a part of Dow Jones, not the other way around. If we're going to write about the Dow Jones take over, I suggest the portion about that be moved to Dow Jones - and condensed heavily on this page. This article is about the WSJ, not about the business behind what a) has not happened yet and b) does not JUST involve one aspect of a multi-billion dollar company. 198.45.19.38 20:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I do not agree - the WSJ is the biggest USA newspaper and clearly the most important part of the Dow Jones coorp. Mr. Mudock was interested in the WSJ; the take over was about the WSJ not about the rest of the company.

155.198.157.118 00:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Regardless of Murdoch's motivation, the fact of the matter is that News Corp. bought (really, "has agreed to buy") Dow Jones & Company, not just the WSJ. The takeover certainly ought to be mentioned on this page -- just like all newspapers' pages mention their owners -- but the real nitty-gritty, blow-by-blow stuff, if it's on Wikipedia at all, ought to be on the DJ and News Corp. articles. ``` W i k i W i s 't' a h ``` 04:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree change it to purchase.Kirin4 17:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Wall Street Journal.jpg
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BetacommandBot 04:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup and history added
Several edits today. I sat down with the August 1 edition of the paper -- the edition that reported on the News Corp. sale -- and incorporated what information I could glean, plus made general copyedits along the way. I kept this edit box open throughout so I could catalogue the changes, in case anyone wants to discuss them. Aside from copyedits and new material, here are the other changse: Wikipedia informs me that the page is now 30 kB. If this presents a problem to someone, let's discuss how to trim. ``` W i k i W i s t a h W a s s a p ``` 03:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Split several sections into subsections to break up what was an intimidating block of gray text (not unlike the way the old six-col. WSJ appeared to this writer, watching Dad read it after dinner ... but enough digression).
 * Infobox: changed "Narrow broadsheet" to "Broadsheet". I realize the paper's thinner than it once was, but it's no thinner than most of the other papers classified as "broadsheet" on Wikipedia. "Broadsheet" alone is enough; otherwise we'll have to go to each non-tab newspaper with a tape-measure and subclassify "narrow", "medium" and "wide" page webs.
 * News Corp. takeover: Deleted The Business citation -- it's a dead link, and th details of a biz journalism scoop aren't really important to the story of the WSJ. Important dates are the date of the takeover bid (May 2) and the date of the acceptance of the bid (Aug. 1). ALSO: We don't need two references for Murdoch taking over DJ. I kept the BBC citation, which appeared to be a more in-depth story. ALSO: Took out a few more citations that were dead links.
 * Opinions: Reunited "editorial line" and "media bias" under one heading because they're related, but broke out several items from "editorial line".
 * Notable reporting: Changed inline citations to footnotes. Reordered subsections chronologically.