Yesterday in BARRON'S ONLINE Eric Savitz says good-bye to Dow Jones. The Bancroft family, which has the controlling interest, issued its statement that it's willing to discuss stuff with the News Corporation.
So who will be left working at Dow Jones when the dust settles? My hunch that one of the keeps will be Peter Lattman, head honcho of the wildly popular THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Law Blog. Rupert Murdoch would be a fool to let this master of snark and sensationalism go.
In retrospect, I see that Lattman was probably one of the few not in denial at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. If he ever had been a journalistic virgin, he quickly joined the rest of us communications sinners and kept amping up conversational interactive.
In fact, I was curious/annoyed that he was that snarky. About a year ago, I took him on about his snide handling of plaintiff lawyer Bill Marler of Marler Clark. I thought it was too much. Lattman was gracious enough to respond to me. But he was unrepentent and continued heavy snark. Incidentally, heavy snark didn't undo Marler either, who himself is very new media. Marler operates 12 blogs and if you get E-Coli and search for a plaintiff attorney on google, you won't miss Marler Clark.
So, Lattman will likely survive. But what about the less out-there writers and editors? You know them, the ones who still put together articles and commentary as if they work in a republican think tank or never outgrew graduate school. Unless they do some radical changing in mindset, values and style, they're finished. The new Dow Jones will vomit them up just as the other old media vomited up almost 18,000 journalistic girl scouts and boy scouts last year. Metro areas are filled with the stench of unemployment and underemployment.
Me? I stopped being a journalistic virgin in the late 20th century when the technology of PowerPoint ate my speechwriting lunch.