The (smart) rats have left the ship

October 25, 2007 9:15 PM

In the wake of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal, several of the paper's top reporters have left for safer ground. Among them is Tara Parker-Pope, who joined the New York Times on October 3rd. Her blog, Well, currently accounts for three of the paper's top ten e-mailed stories: in addition to number 1, Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, she has number 5, Shhh...My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me), and number 8, Drug-Resistant Staph: What You Need to Know. Touché Rupert.
posted by alms (23 comments total)

Touché service journalism? I don't read the WSJ for that shit.
posted by Spacelegoman at 9:21 PM on October 25, 2007

Yeah, none of these stories are that impressive. I thought "Five Easy Ways..." was particularly weak.
posted by pombe at 9:29 PM on October 25, 2007

Why would Rupert and his News CorporationOxymoron even be interested in an article on Drug-Resistant Staph if they can't blame it on Al Queda? Even under the Old Management, Tara made a smart move for the kind of journalism she wants to do.

The real rats (as in vermin) are the ones jumping from CNBC to Fox MonkeyBusiness. Drop any ethics you may still be carrying into the blue trashcan at the door...
posted by wendell at 9:42 PM on October 25, 2007

This seems like a not-terribly-inappropriate place to ask about a word that I'm trying to think of:

"To make receptive towards a particular idea", or "to make the mind a fertile ground for a particular idea".

For example, "Rupert Murdoch has (somethinged) the American people towards torture, autocracy, and the dissolution of civil liberties."
posted by Flunkie at 10:28 PM on October 25, 2007

Her blog, Well, currently accounts for three of the paper's top ten e-mailed stories

Like oh my GOD
posted by dhammond at 11:10 PM on October 25, 2007

Touché Rupert? Fuck you, alms. Journalism, whatever style, will prevail. And no self-respecting reader gave a shit for Personal Journal anyway.
posted by parmanparman at 11:24 PM on October 25, 2007

Flunkie: After a little rejiggering of your sentence I think “primed” would work.

Also I don’t understand this post. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have different readerships, so what’s popular among one set of readers might not be as popular with the other. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have much to do with it.
posted by tepidmonkey at 11:31 PM on October 25, 2007

Why would Rupert and his News CorporationOxymoron even be interested in an article on Drug-Resistant Staph if they can't blame it on Al Queda?

Touche indeed, wendell! (I don't know how to make the accented e)

As an aside... alms, you have the nickname I wanted when I joined Mefi! A.L.M.S. are my initials. But I bear no ill will... grumble grumble grumble... :)
posted by amyms at 11:45 PM on October 25, 2007

This post would have worked so much better if it was
"WSJ RAPED BY GIANT GAY ASYLUM SEEKING MURDOCH. REPORTERS FLEE"
posted by srboisvert at 1:46 AM on October 26, 2007

I think it is a touché moment.

Going by Murdoch's exploits with his other media outlets, I would think that the inane and anodyne content generated by this Parker-Pope person would be exactly what he's looking for in his new-look WSJ. Cover-to-cover.

But she took it elsewhere. Hah, take that Rupert! You can't just buy me!
posted by Jakey at 3:18 AM on October 26, 2007

Sorry, I just stumbled on this thread and wanted to say that Rupert Fucking Murdoch is a total fucking cunt.

That's all I have to say on the matter.
posted by strawberryviagra at 5:56 AM on October 26, 2007

That co-sleeping article she wrote bothered me. She just glossed over the data on co-sleeping as increasing risk. There's a lot of discussion on that in the SIDS research community right now... it would be nice if she spent, oh, one whole paragraph discussing that.
posted by deliquescent at 6:22 AM on October 26, 2007

How 'bout this for Murdoch lead on topic?

Pap producing pinhead punts paper, produces pointless puff pieces.
posted by sfts2 at 6:30 AM on October 26, 2007

Flunkie: Disposed?
posted by crookedneighbor at 7:46 AM on October 26, 2007

Rupert Murdoch probably isn't losing much sleep over losing her to the Times.
posted by blucevalo at 8:29 AM on October 26, 2007

In related news: FCC’s Copps Calls for News Corp.-Wall Street Journal Inquiry.
posted by ericb at 8:40 AM on October 26, 2007

From the co-sleeping article:

In a series of studies in Britain, scientists interviewed parents about their children’s sleep habits, but also used infrared cameras to monitor the parents’ bedroom. The children often spent part of the night in the adults’ bed, but in about half those cases, the parents did not reveal that unless they were specifically asked.

This sorta creeped me out, if it means what I think it does.
posted by cj_ at 9:11 AM on October 26, 2007

Sharing a bed with an infant is a pretty great way to wake up next to a dead baby.
posted by Reggie Digest at 10:56 AM on October 26, 2007

Sharing a bed with an infant is a pretty great way to wake up next to a dead baby.

no, it's not--not if done with some sanity. for instance, letting an infant sleep beside you on a firm king-size mattress with the foam divider thingies they sell specifically for the purpose isn't really all that dangerous. this seems like such precious non-sense to me sometimes. i appreciate that co-sleeping correlates with higher infant mortality, but there's also pretty good evidence that the correlation is much stronger when the parents have been drinking or doing drugs. and in the developing world, and pretty much throughout all of human history, young infants slept alongside their parents for at least the first few months. the psychological impact of the recent shift in our culture away from co-sleeping aren't very well understood, and may actually be negative. we didn't regularly co-sleep with our own son (instead we had a sleeper in our bedroom until he was about 9 months old) but he would often wake in the night crying for our attention and then spend at least a couple of hours in the bed with us until he was settled down and sleeping soundly again. i understand the concerns about idiots co-sleeping in the worst ways (in a single bed with heavy blankets after a night of smoking crack or whatever), but why oversimplify the issue? co-sleeping is not some strange new phenomenon we all need to wake up to all of a sudden, as it sometimes seems to be portrayed by the busy-bodies with nothing but time on their hands to think of new ways to nanny people to death.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:40 AM on October 26, 2007

but that's a derail, so... just, like, never mind.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:51 AM on October 26, 2007

No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper. -- Mike Royko, who quit when the Sun-Times was bought by News Corp.

"His goal is not quality journalism... His goal is vast power for Rupert Murdoch, political power."

In any case, I thought the Parker-Pope pieces were OK, and certainly the type of story that gets e-mailed, so a bit of a coup for the Times there.

Flunkie, the most appropriate word for your sentence is probably "inured". "Acclimated" would work almost as well.
posted by dhartung at 12:51 PM on October 26, 2007

why oversimplify the issue?

Right, because assuming everyone with heavy blankets must be insane or on crack isn't an oversimplification in the slightest, and of course the typical response to, "I want to sweep wif my cutie baby-waby," is naturally going to be, "but first, let's replace our mattress and get one of those specially-designed foam dividers I've never heard of." Right.

It's a simple issue: Smother baby, baby dies. Yes, the solutions are simple, but many parents simply don't know there's any problem to solve in the first place.

In any case, the article reads like a defensive justification for the author's own irrational behavior. I've watched enough Nanny 911 (thanks, Rupert!) to know arrested development (thanks, Rupert!) when I see it.
posted by Reggie Digest at 5:27 PM on October 26, 2007

rd: the "simplifying" bit referred to glossing over the potential developmental consequences of abruptly shifting away from the historical norm (which no matter how you may feel about it is co-sleeping)--early human psychological development has a component related to properly forming attachment to their parents. historically, co-sleeping has been one of the mechanisms by which healthy imprinting and attachment take place. But this is a complex issue and off-topic as all get-out, so let's not get into it.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:50 AM on October 29, 2007