Since The New Criterion’s last appearance, the summer has witnessed two epoch-making events in the storied history of American journalism: the acquisition by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation of Dow Jones, publishers of The Wall Street Journal, and the passing from the media scene of The Weekly World News, whose regular reports on Elvis- and alien-sightings and the continuing adventures of the mutant Bat Boy seem finally to have palled on a readership which once numbered over a million. Less earth-shaking but in its way, perhaps, more ground-breaking than either of these stories was the publication of Scott Gant’s We’re All Journalists Now which, in its title, provides the link between them and the occasion for some reflections on the relationship between news and entertainment.

In the first place, of course, the spate of viewing-with-alarm with which the rest of the media—and especially The New York Times—greeted the Journal’s sale was political in its motivations. Yet the Times’s editorial, under the heading “Notes About Competition,” claimed quite another sort of worry. Characteristically, it began with a bit of self-congratulation. “If we were in any other business, a risky takeover of a powerful competitor might lead to celebration,” wrote the preening editorialist. “Not in our business. Good journalism, which is an essential part of American democracy, thrives on competition. More than anything, competition makes our work better—more ambitious, more in-depth, more honest. When Americans are served by many different, responsible, competing news outlets, they