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Home Front: Culture Wars
Wall Street Journal Editor Admonishes Reporters Over Trump Coverage
2017-08-25
[NYT]
...whose shrinking newsroom is uneasy for other reasons...
Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve.

Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Wednesday after Mr. Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.
Really? Expressed to who?
"Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting," Mr. Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning to a group of Journal news hounds and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.

He added in a follow-up, "Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?"
No wonder the New York Times is shocked. But I suspect Mr. Baker is delighted by the publicity about his position on the subject -- I certainly am.
A copy of Mr. Baker’s emails was reviewed by The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
Contacted about the emails on Wednesday, a Wall Street Journal spokeswoman wrote in a statement: "The Wall Street Journal has a clear separation between news and opinion. As always, the key priority is to focus reporting on facts and avoid opinion seeping into news coverage."

In February, Mr. Baker fielded tough questions at an all-hands staff meeting about whether the newspaper’s reporting on Mr. Trump was too soft. Mr. Baker denied that notion, and he suggested that other newspapers had abandoned their objectivity about the president; he also encouraged journalists unhappy with the Journal’s coverage to seek employment elsewhere.
It's a top newspaper that employs top 1% reporters, and pays them accordingly. They'll have no trouble finding replacements, while the typically liberal news staff will become somewhat more conservative, a happy differentiator during these competitive times.
Posted by:trailing wife

#3  Mr. Baker has a a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics with honors from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK. Not a J-school graduate and thus obviously 'unqualified' to the NYT.
Posted by: Pappy   2017-08-25 10:35  

#2  Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump

That's because he doesn't grasp the fundamentals. He wants to produce a news paper. His staff wants to produce a political broadsheet, but advertize it as a news paper.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2017-08-25 07:20  

#1  Happy and Profitable differentiator.

Imagine what happened without journolist spin. a return to reporting, a news source without a narrative.

Where will journos be able to morally preen in front of their far-left peers? They should resign en-masse to show how irreplaceable they are.

Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2017-08-25 04:22  

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