Mr. Murdoch and the Journal

Fuente: Strategy Op. Ed.:

"For we strategists, negotiating between value creation and institutional objectives remains the great unsolved challenge. Where ethics and social responsibility is involved the response is relatively easy: Do the right thing. But the Journal’s social contribution consists in giving voice to a particular economic and political ideology and doing it better than anyone else; while of great social value, it is not a social obligation. People like me depend on the Journal (and the Times) to give us the news and opinion straight and don't mind paying for it. The question is whether there are enough us and enough profit to make it worthwhile for these newspapers to continue doing things as they have decades.

The Times and The Journal are businesses, not public goods. Their shareholders are free to decide if they wish to maximize their wealth by selling the brands to those, like Mr. Murdoch, who are likely to change editorial and journalistic policy in the pursuit of value creation. The same shareholders are also free, as both the Journal and the Times have asked in their editorial pages, to risk economic value for more 'institutional value'. I like to call such companies 'maintenance-for-profit' companies in that they defend an institutional position though it may reduce economic rents. This differs from social entrepreneurship, which consists of setting up companies whose mission is to solve clearly defined social problems while also turning a profit for owners"