Kathy, No More Meetings With People, Please

From the Wall Street Journal's anthology of items from yesterday's release of documents and tapes by the Nixon library in Yorba Linda:

A five-page memo by Mr. Nixon describes his personal habits for dissemination to “friendly columnists and authors,” and sets out the president’s loathing for social breakfasts, social lunches, social cocktails and social dinners, because they take time away for “long-range, broad-scope thinking,” and that he doesn’t feel he can afford to spend five hours playing golf for the same reason.

So Nixon didn't like people? On the contrary. But social interactions, except for those that made almost no demands on his emotional energy, were exhausting, as with all strong introverts. This listing ranks Nixon as an ENTJ on the Myers Briggs scale, but that can't be right. RN was definitely INTJ:

[M]any INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk...

And then there's small-minded talk. The Journal and others interpret a page of chief of staff Bob Haldeman's notes as a presidential order that the administration's Jews be banned from working on Middle East issues. Nixon's passions about Jews and their politics are well-documented and not pleasant to behold. And he was at his worst when talking with Haldeman. In this case, it sounds like Nixon was sounding one of his leitmotifs, which was that his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who was Jewish, couldn't be objective about the struggles and negotiations between Israel and the Arabs. Unless someone can dig up evidence of an order being issued and carried out, it's probably just hot air, plus an additional insight about the fascinating collaboration-cum-rivalry between the two towering strategists of detente.

As these releases continue, and we get further away from Nixon days, reporters will need to brush up on their history. Here's what the Journal says about the newly released page of Haldeman notes. Note that they have the personnel all wrong. Haldeman was chief of staff; Alexander Haig was Kissinger's aide:

Mr. Nixon ordered his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel, according to formerly classified notes taken by White House aide H. R. “Bob” Haldeman on a meeting with the president in July 1971. “No Jew can handle the Israeli thing,” the notes read. Later in the one-page excerpt, Mr. Haldeman writes, “Forget the Jews — they’re against” the administration.

They should check this stuff with Rupert Murdoch. He knows.

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten

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Propheteer

Tycoon and publisher Rupert Murdoch was once among the most despised men in journalism. Now his company bids to lead his whole industry back from the brink of financial disaster by helping publishers and editors understand that that they can only survive by charging for editorial content:

As newspapers across the country struggle with declining readership and advertising revenue, News Corp. executives have been meeting in recent weeks with publishers about forming a consortium that would charge for news distributed online and on portable devices -- and potentially stem the rising tide of red ink.

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.