DeLong on the Wall Street Journal's bizarre editorial pages

I didn't sign up for the WSJ Online because I didn't want to send any coins to anyone involved with the WSJ's editorial pages. They editorial page has been barking mad for years, and the op-ed page has been merely perverse, irrational, and wacky. Imagine my surprise when DeLong tells us that Journal insiders have the same opinion of the editorial pages ...

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Dr. Dow-Jones and Mr. Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch

...Some Journal insiders--even some on the news side--say that this Jekyll-and-Hyde relationship is all to the advantage of the good Dr. Jekyll. Nobody serious believes the editorial page, they say; it serves as a comics page for the older and more-wingnutty subscribers, a source of daily comfort food for those who still denounce, "that Communist, Franklin Roosevelt," and who have always thought that the depth and duration of the Great Depression were the fault of the New Deal--that if the free-market tidal wave of falling wages and massive bankruptcies had been allowed to purge the economy for 1933 and 1934, by 1935 and 1936 all would have been well. But, this faction says, the editorial page delivers up perhaps half a million extra subscribers a year, and that money flow pays for the finest news-reporting operation in the world.

Other Journal insiders say that it is the bad Mr. Hyde that is sucking the blood of Dr. Jekyll. Nobody would pay attention to the wingnuts of the editorial page, they say, were it not for the fact that they come at the back of a very, very good newspaper. 50,000 people a month read the American Spectator, where Bartley's crew belongs. 1,000,000 people a day at least glance at the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The reporters in the news division are thus in a morally ambiguous position as journalists: the stories they write inform the public, and the public they attract then turns to page A16--and is there misinformed...

I think the "blood sucker" segment is right. The WSJ editorial pages are a font of material for the certainly not-stupid but definitely barking mad wingnuts that generate AM talk radio. It's a malign influence that does far greater damage than the good done by the news page. If Murdoch ends up destroying the news pages, he'll have done us all a favor. If he ends up moderating the editorial pages, that's good too. If he does some of both then the outcome is harder to judge ...