Forget the Denials. It’s War for Times, WSJ

(Crain’s) — One recent sunday, The New York Times went after Rupert Murdoch in a way I hope he admired. The investigation of voicemail hacking by Murdoch’s News of the World belied Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.’s claim in the latest issue of Vanity Fair that his Times and Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal are not at war.

Until Murdoch bought the Journal, the drama in local newspapering was the tabloid war between his New York Post and Mort Zuckerman’s Daily News. Now, it’s the broadsheet war that fascinates, as the Journal‘s losses and Murdoch’s troubles mount, while the Times is so destabilized that a mere rumor that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim was upping his stake caused its battered stock price to spike.

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