Murdoch: Once Satan, Now Savior?

David Carr, New York Times media writer, talking on a Dec. 26 Book Review podcast about Rupert Murdoch's impact on journalism and the Wall Street Journal, which he recently bought:

I was at a party last night for a Journal reporter that's switching assignments. Unlike a lot of journalism parties I've been to lately, number one, it was about a promotion, number two, it was filled with happy people who were excited about what they were doing. The suggestion that Mr. Murdoch was going to ruin the Journal, which I and others couldn't say often enough when he bought the paper, turns out to be not true, not so far....[T]o suggest that he or [managing editor] Robert Thompson have gone about the business of tearing it apart or diminishing it just hasn't proven to be the case.

Reminds me of an article my editor friend Tracy Wood sent me in November about a publisher's party where the paper's employees were parking cars to earn extra money. Turns out Murdoch, at whom newspaper people have been turning up their noses for years, may be one of the few publishers left who can keep them all in business.