Joseph Lelyveld at the EXPRESS

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Four or five years later, I went to Kolkata for an article. Early morning, I flew from Delhi to Kolkata. I sat next to a gentleman in the airplane and being loquacious, I told him the Malle story. I ended by saying, “Of course, it must be apocryphal.” He said, “Oh no, I know that inspector. In fact, I am having dinner at his house tonight. Would you like to come?” And I went to the inspector’s house that night, and he confirmed the story and showed me his collection of films. So, I’ve always had a soft spot for Kolkata.

•SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI: The New York Times took a public position against Murdoch buying the Wall Street Journal. The Indian Express had not opposed it. What is your personal view?

Murdoch is a very smart man but aside from the NYT’s Literary Supplement which I think he probably has forgotten he owns (a little pimple in the whole body of Murdoch’s enterprises), I can’t think of any publication he’s made better. He’s made a lot of publications more profitable but a number of his papers also lose money. The Times in London loses money, the New York Post loses huge amounts of money. It doesn’t bother him because he likes the prestige of owning those papers.

I think his plan for the WSJ is unfortunate and in some ways good. He’s going to change the paper and he sees it as a competitor to NYT. In that sense, I welcome it. But if he moves WSJ more towards becoming a general interest paper, it will obviously be less of a financial paper and less of a concentration of talent, knowledge and experience in that area. So, it’s a bold move and since there was no ownership prepared to defend the WSJ, it became an inevitability. But there is a certain tendency in Murdoch: he is a clever newspaperman and he’s a brilliant entrepreneur but he does tend to cheapen what he owns.

(The transcript was prepared by Irena Akbar.)

editor@expressindia.com

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