• Rupert Murdoch is still willing to pour money into the New York newspaper wars, "decline of the newspaper industry" be damned. He will not rest until he can claim superiority over the NYT as a general interest paper in the NYC market. Or he will die trying, literally!
• People most likely to be angry about this: The WSJ's Boston bureau, which was recently closed.
• People who should be most worried about this: New York Post staffers. Every dollar Rupert puts into the WSJ is a dollar that he's not putting into the Post. Which already has very good local coverage, in a vile tabloidy way.
• People who may view this news with keen interest: The 100 New York Times newsroom staffers who have to be gone by the end of the year. "Hiring," you say?

Whoa. Read that over again. According to a blockbuster report in The Guardian yesterday:

But one senior source at the Met told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets.

All of this reportedly surfaced after a News of the World reporter was jailed two years ago for hacking phones. At the time, the company said it was an isolated incident. But if the Guardian's report is true, Murdoch's UK tabloids are—incredibly—even more despicable than we would have thought. The Guardian says that the company has paid one million pounds in out-of-court settlements to keep it all quiet. It also insinuates that top editors including Rebekah Wade could be implicated, though the extent of individual executives' knowledge is not clear.

Rupert Murdoch has already denied the report. But for Americans, the story is already being cast as a direct, veiled assault on Murdoch himself. Not just because he's the lone News Corp. figure familiar to most Americans, but because every US competitor paper would love to see him smeared! Chiefly, the New York Times—who put the story on the front page of their website, and were sure to include the phrase "Murdoch Papers" in the headline. [The "Murdoch Papers" are the papers of News Corp's News International division: the Times of London and the Sunday Times (more respectable), and the News of the World and The Sun (dirty).]

So what we have here is, potentially, a clear case of blatant criminal misconduct at some of the biggest papers owned the world's biggest newspaper mogul—and this case could go all the way to the top. Or it could not! But watch gleefully as the New York Times reports the hell out of it, waging a newspaper war in its own "What newspaper war?" way. (Where are you on this, NY Daily News?). And really, this is beyond the pale, even for what are some of the least scrupulous papers in the world. Hacking phones and hiring private eyes are scumbag tactics. We would even expect better from Rupert Murdoch.

[Guardian, NYT. Pic: Getty]

Yesterday, WP publisher Katharine Weymouth ran her own apology for the flier that went out to evil DC lobbyists last week offering to sell access to the newsroom at intimate dinners for the low low price of $25,000.

The apology was okay. Not poetic, or dramatic, but okay. Occam's Razor tells us that what probably happened here was one asshole in the marketing department got a little too gung-ho with this whole "intimate dinners with influencers" idea and sent out an idiotic flier. Politico broke the story last Thursday. If there had been any indication that the Washington Post was trying to defend this flier, then okay. Controversial. But from the very minute the story broke, the paper said that this offer was obviously against their own internal guidelines, and their own newsroom immediately disavowed it, so whatever.

The next day the NYT put it on the front page! Which was already more prominence than it deserved. The next day there was a column about it on the front of the business section, and now another story today on the Post's apology.

This is the New York Times' version of kicking the competition. The Times is generally too stiff to come right out and do a dance in print at the misfortune of their competitors, like the tabloids do. Instead the just decide to cover the hell out of a relatively minor media story! Perhaps the WP still strike back with a mildly disapproving mention in a Howard Kurtz column. Suck my hot type and die, motherfuckers! Journalistically!

It all started Wednesday, when the Journal's managing editor, full of the sort of swagger Rupert Murdoch encourages at News Corp., took a victory lap for gains in copies sold to individuals ("the truest measure of readership") and in what people pay to read the Journal. In the process, he insinuated that some Times subscribers have suffered "brain death."

The Times blasted back that the Journal's growth has been due to discounted bundles of print and online subscriptions ($10 for the paper with an $89 online sign-up) and due to online-only sales. So the Journal's braggadocio was "strange," said a Times spokeswoman.

Now the Journal has sent us an email response (below) effectively stating — quite correctly — that if it has convinced people to send in money to read Journal content, the breakdown between print and online is unimportant (in this day and age especially). Besides, the Times is trying to sell digital subscriptions too, it just hasn't been nearly as successful.

Newspaper wars are an old tradition; they are one of the few types of competition the present generation of publishers have experience with. So this sort of petty feuding must be comforting, on some level, to both the Times and the Journal.

But the real threat is still online, in various corners of the internet. Name calling doesn't work so well there. These salty old media companies had better focus their aggression on innovation. No more circ memos!

Dear Ryan [Tate],

Your piece on the WSJ editor's leaked memo was interesting (as were the comments that followed). The memo by WSJ's Robert Thomson,
however, contained some strange analysis.

He says the Wall Street Journal was one of the only newspapers to show growth. This statement misses a major point:

The increase (0.6%) was driven by a 31,000 increase in Electronic circulation and a 102,000-copy (+21%) increase in deeply-discounted subscriptions — in some cases selling print subscriptions as a $10. "add-on" to an $89. wsj.com subscription. In reality, the Wall Street Journal lost 6% of its full-price subscriptions.

While the WSJ was up overall in copies sold, it was down 1.1% in print.

In these latest circulation figures, as filed with Audit Bureau of Circulations, subject to audit, The New York Times performed significantly better than the industry, showing modest declines (-3.5% daily, -1.7% on Sunday) in total circulation, but demonstrating strength in our National circulation as well as newsstand copies, results that were boosted by the incredible excitement during and following the election cycle.

Two years ago The New York Times changed its circulation strategy to pursue more highly-profitable, high-retention circulation, with less emphasis on things such as outbound telemarketing or special promotions that were expensive and resulted in high churn rates. Instead we are focusing on building our core of loyal readers. For example we have more than 830,000 subscribers who have been with us for two years or more, up from 650,000 in 2000. Our focus is on attracting a high-quality audience of individually-paid subscribers.

The NYT remains the largest 7-day newspaper in the U.S. and has won 101 Pulitzer Prizes and citations— including the five Pulitzers it was awarded last week — more than any other news organization.

Diane

Diane McNulty
Executive Director of Community Affairs and Media Relations
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Most of these journalistic-hopefuls screwed their careers in the very first episode. After their last issue under the "old" editor in chief, the staff celebrated with a house party that included a game involving ping-pong balls, red plastic cups and a mysterious unseen liquid. Two of the show's characters, Trevor Ballard and Giana Pacinelli, sneaked upstairs for some "alone" time.

Not to say high school students are required to be "innocent," but Web sites like Facebook and MySpace already cause future employees trouble. The first episode of this show is basically like "Minors Gone Wild."

True, these high school staffers could have been drinking water or sparkling cider. Trever and his girlfriend Giana could have just gone upstairs to talk or snuggle. But I doubt future employers will view their actions as such.

These potential future pillars of the journalism industry have shamed the very job they wanted to immortalize. And worse, they have dragged their own good names through the mud, and a good name is one of the most prized processions a journalist can own.

To be fair, these high school students could be amazing people. They could be responsible, talented, journalistically attuned, career-ambitious individuals, but at the end of the season, none of those qualities matter. Because in the end, no newspaper wants to use a byline tattered with a mixture of mud and shame.

And finally,

Andy Harper is a senior journalism major.

[via Romenesko]

The Times "destroyed" the Journal on the Bear Stearns story—no one is quite sure why JPMorgan Chase shut out the Journal, but they did. "When [JPMorgan Chase CEO] James Diamon went over to meet with the executives at Bear Stearns to explain the merger [namely, the low share price], it was a pretty ugly scene. [Times reporter] Landon Thomas had it all in the paper the next day." It is insinuated that Thomas was in the room for the ugly scene. No 'WSJ' rep was present.

Beyond that, the Timesman, taking a wry tone, suggested that the Journal had made some "odd decisions regarding story selection recently." For instance, on March 28, a short item ran in the Journal reporting that Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone had taken a kiss-and-make-up lunch with Tom Cruise, whom Redstone had fired a couple of years back. It's the sort of gossip item that would normally never see the light of day in a financial paper. The Times passed on the entire matter.

And though the Timesman didn't say as much, the implication was clear: while the Cruise tip may not have come straight from Murdoch, it sure smelled like it. When it comes to their money Journal readers aren't exactly ideological. If they get the feeling that they're getting spun that's going to be a problem.

Any speculation on who this anonymous Times booster is? Someone who might be Canadian, maybe?

Times 2, Journal 0: The newspaper war heats up over Tom Cruise, Bear Stearns and Murdoch's henchman [Spectator]

So far it consists mainly of cutting back on those charming A-hed features (men buying girdles!) and the expansion of national political news. Also, a sports page, a quarterly lifestyle magazine, and recipes in the Saturday edition. All terrible crimes against journalism, obv, but not bad for the ad dollars.

The Murdoch Journal has distinguished itself with a couple good stories this election season, especially its scoop about a fight between Clinton aides Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald.

Also, Murdoch's England-imported publisher Robert Thomson, former editor of the Times of London, is one of those British newspaper types who says outrageous things in interviews about competitors, which is pretty entertaining.

How much is the evil Australian newspaper magnate actually forcing the paper to follow his petty whims and acquiesce to his tyrannical demands? Not really so much, it turns out. Unlike at the New York Post, an ideological realignment wasn't particularly needed at the already conservative Journal. And, as at other Murdoch ventures like Fox News, surrogates handle the day-to-day work of making sure Rupert's views are represented without muddying the boss's hands.

"[Editor Marcus] Brauchli says Murdoch sets 'broad objectives' and lets his editors figure out how to meet them." Doesn't that sound ominous?

Wall St. Journal Makes Politics Its Business [WSJ]

"We knew this was coming," the insider told us. Maybe it was the way publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. stood with his "hands locked together in this pensive way," that clued staffers streaming into the shiny new red-seated TimesCenter auditiorium about what Keller might tell them. Or maybe it was just common sense—after all, the Times has held out longer than most when it comes to layoffs.

And so, even though we never wrote about it anyway, we here at Gawker Weekend mourn the loss, and weep for a nation in which PARADE now stands to become even more of an issue. Click through, then, for full coverage of LIFE's last gasp.

Actually, just kidding. As you might extrapolate from the image above, the LIFE website is barren and stacked with scaffolding. Meanwhile, we can't seem to get our hands on a physical copy. Anyone out there reading have a LIFE? Tell us what's on the cover! Is there a goodbye?

Too bad we can't find this stuff on the website, really, since according to the press release we read, life.com is supposed to become the central portal for all of the magazine's content (seriously, all of it, as in, all 10 million images their photographers have taken since 1936). Forget about the sadly nostalgic yet hopeful splash screen, featuring a slideshow of covers from LIFE's golden age: if you figure out how to penetrate into the heart of the site, you'll notice that the webmasters haven't uploaded a single new issue of the magazine since its dissolution was announced on March 26th. Click around a little though—it is Saturday—and you'll find a really fun "Picture Puzzle" game, in which you look at two very similar photos and figure out all the ways in which they are different.

PARADE, in the meantime, mouths watering for those 103 newspapers now in need of some insertion, seem to be twisting the knife, giving top billing on parade.com to a photo contest about America's beauty. "You can be a winner!" they say, as if to suggest, "Hey, LIFE guys! We bodied you! Amateurs can do your jobs and we're going to pay them for it!" It is devilish under the circumstances, and frankly un-American. Do not enter that contest.—LEON