The Ever Expanding Empire

In early August 2007, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, added Dow Jones & Company to his already vast media empire. Dow Jones & Company is the publisher of the well-known and respected Wall Street Journal. Murdoch also announced that he intends to launch the Fox Business Network in October of 2007. Many of his rival media conglomerates feel that this is an ominous sign. In his article "Murdoch's Expanding Empire Seen as 'Ominious' Sign" on the Inter Press Service Web site, affiliate Khody Akhavi tells us why the ominous feeling among competitors of Murdoch.

Murdoch has a certain reputation for disregarding the established and traditional models of honest journalism to further his own agendas, in terms of politics and business. Akhavi explains that many of Murdoch's competitors seen his acquisition of Dow Jones & Company as an attempt to make the launching of the Fox Business Network a success. Critics of this convergence, fell that this will turn the Wall Street Journal into a platform for Murdoch's own political views. Some do look upon Murdoch's venture as a positive, but by no means does everyone feel this way.

"While the coupling of Dow Jones and the new FOX venture is a victory for proponents of media consolidation , much of the anger throughout the journalist community has been directed at Murdoch's acquisition of the Journal --a publication many in the U.S. believe to be the most respected name in business reporting," Akhavi said.

Murdoch's already vast empire, News Corp., includes The New York Post, Twentieth Century Fox, and the Times of London, along with a variety of other publications in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Time will tell whether or not Murdoch's acquisition of Dow Jones & Company and subsequent coupling with the Fox Business Network will be a successful convergence or the downfall of the journalistic integrity of the Wall Street Journal.

Journalist Burnout

In his article, posted on the Poynter Institute Web site, affiliate Don Fry suggests that once journalists hit a certain level of competency, they plateau or burnout and simply stop improving. He views this plateau as a crisis that must be fixed; the article suggests causes as well as solutions to this problem.

Causes cited in the article range from lack of skill on the part of the journalist and low expectations from the editor to just plain boredom. Fry suggests:

“The key symptom of burnout is seeing oneself doing the same thing over and over forever, with no way to break out, dreading it.”

While Fry does believe that this is a major problem in the field of journalism, he also believes that there are solutions to aid this issue of journalist burnout. He suggests:

• Change
• Learning New Skills
• Raising Expectations
• Praising Good Work
  

These are a few of the solutions Fry suggests for burnt out journalists, they are explained in detail in his article, “The Perils of Plateau: Helping Stuck Journalists.” To be truly successful in their field aspiring as well as established journalists must be aware of this pitfall, along with its causes and its solutions.