PR Pros on WSJ Sale: Yawn...

PR Week made a few calls last week and concluded that the sale of the Wall Street Journal was "no biggie" to the PR industry.

The author, Hamilton Nolan, wrote a story for the print version of PR Week and then blogged about it on PR Week's site, providing quite a bit more detail in the blog than in the story.

From the story:

The consensus among several experts who have worked closely with the paper was that the widespread fears of the erosion of editorial quality at the Journal are, as one put it, "overblown."

His best point, from the blog:

This story is a great example of the different perspectives of those in PR and those in journalism. And on that note, look for a lot of PR firms to hire ex-WSJ reporters in the near future.

One more time, for the record: I think the sale of the Journal and the rest of Dow Jones will have major, major repercussions in American business journalism. I think News Corp. will slowly but surely erode the quality of coverage, not just at the Journal but also on the Dow Jones newswire. You will definitely see fewer hard-hitting investigative pieces in the Journal. You will definitely see current Journal reporters and editors either heading for the exits or hanging on for dear life. They will likely be replaced by lesser journalists who are friendlier to business.