Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

The News Corp. (NWS-A) spin machine is in high gear as people are going over as many scenarios they can think of to try to figure out what they'll do with the Wall Street Journal.

One thing Rupert Murdoch threw out at the quarterly earnings call last week was the idea of offering more general news at the national and international level; an obvious reference to competing with the New York Times (NYT) and other large newspapers.

As one senior executive at the company said: "Rupert thinks the Times is vulnerable. He's going to go after them."

Responding to that idea, the L.A. Times cites Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University's journalism school, saying he believes knocking off the Times as the "authoritative paper of record ... would be akin to creating a soda that overtakes Coca-Cola."

Personally and professionally, I think he's completely off in that assessment. Many people have been abandoning the Times over they years because of their far left political bent. It's not considered the national newspaper any longer by a majority of centrists.

For the east coast elites, it's still the paper of record, but I think they're vulnerable there as well, as people abandon it for news on the Internet while their circulation continues to fall.

Some existing employees of News Corp., as well as past ones, think Murdoch is really just throwing out disinformation to keep competitors up in the air and unable to make definite plans to respond because they don't know the direction Murdoch is going. They also say more than likely he'll attack the business side of the Times business first. Others think he may do nothing with the news side of it at all for some time.

One thing I do believe, is Murdoch is able to see weaknesses in his competitors. Remember when the broadcast networks laughed of Fox as a viable fourth network? They aren't laughing any more.

What's interesting about the fascination with the possibilities is it creates a powerful smoke screen that is difficult to penetrate by competitors because it covers a growing number of options Murdoch could do with the journal. It could be an battle that he wages on a number of different fronts at the same time, making the waters even murkier.

It's almost impossible for competitors to know what he'll do. But the fact that everyone is looking for clues at which direction he'll take on a number of fronts, shows he's already starting to create the agenda that so many think can't be taken away from the New York Times.

Who's concerned about the direction the Times is taking? Everybody knows what that is. They are extremely vulnerable in my estimation and with their past performance in the Interent age, are stuggling without News Corp. owning the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones' properties.

They can spin it any way they like, over the next few years, they're in for the fight of their lives, and it'll be good for consumers.