Let Us Now Praise...Conrad Black

As a general rule, newspapers are owned by ogres. As with the Presidency of the United States, desiring the office or, in this instance, the title, should be considered enough to disqualify anyone from consideration. Nevertheless, it matters what kind of ogre it is. There’s a chasm between a Richard Desmond (Express) or a Sam Zell (Tribune Company) and a Rupert Murdoch (half the English-speaking world).

Conrad Black, bless him, is in the latter camp. A newspaper proprietor of the proper, old-fashioned brutish school. That is, one who likes newspapers while having a suitably low opinion of both journalism and journalists. He rightly says, in this review of three books about American papers, that journalists’ favourite subjects are themselves and implies, I think, and rightly so that the public are unimpressed by the endless caterwauling over the future fate of all these inky wretches.