Stephen Glover on The Press

Why is Rupert Murdoch trying to buy Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal? Newspaper sales have been declining in America just as quickly as in Britain, and the Journal, although it still sells more than two million copies a day, is not immune.

One plausible explanation being touted around is that the Wall Street Journal would give Mr Murdoch a fount of authoritative financial journalism that could be disseminated throughout his empire. In particular, News Corp, the company he controls, is about to launch the Fox Business Channel in America. Being able to call on the Journal's enormous resources and high reputation would give him an edge over his rivals.

Nor is it merely a newspaper. Almost alone in the United States, or indeed anywhere else, the Journal has been able to persuade people to pay for accessing its website. It has nearly one million subscribers. Evidently, readers are more willing to shell out good money for financial on-line news and comment than they are for general content.

So the Wall Street Journal would offer Mr Murdoch an invaluable resource while giving him at least half a foot in the new media. But we shouldn't assume that he will simply leave the paper alone and watch it slowly wither on the vine. We can be sure he has plans for it. According to some sources, he has been advised and encouraged by Robert Thomson, the editor of The Times, who once hoped to be editor of The Financial Times. Mr Thomson knows, and has worked in, America. Might he take over at the Journal?

You can bet your bottom dollar that if Mr Murdoch does get the paper he will take it downmarket. That is what he always does - look at The Times and Sunday Times. By contemporary British standards the Journal is a very upmarket title. To our eyes, which are so used to large headlines and ubiquitous colour photographs even in so-called quality newspapers, it may appear forbidding and austere. Mr Murdoch will jazz it up in the hope of reversing its slow circulation decline, though he will not want to jeopardise its authority.

Of course, Mr Murdoch has not got it yet, and may still not do so. Some Democratic Party politicians are stirring in the undergrowth, grumbling about Mr Murdoch's right-wing views. I wonder how far they will get. The bigger stumbling block will be the Bancroft family, whose 35-odd members control 65 per cent of Dow Jones shares.

For the moment, enough of them are holding firm against Mr Murdoch, but they are a disparate lot, and, unlike other family-owned newspaper groups such as The New York Times or Daily Mail and General Trust, Dow Jones does not have a single concentration of shares. With his usual guile Mr Murdoch will pick off the weak and the greedy and uncertain.

The chances are that he will succeed. Certainly a younger Murdoch would have done. A month or two ago I suggested that a sense of drift in his British newspaper empire might indicate that the 76-year-old media tycoon was no longer quite the man he once was. If he pulls off the Dow Jones deal I will cheerfully eat humble pie.

It would also destroy a fantasy of mine - namely that Mr Murdoch would buy the Financial Times and therefore be required by the regulators to sell the Times, which could then be restored to its former greatness.

That would seem much less likely to happen if Mr Murdoch gets Dow Jones. In acquiring the Times more than 25 years ago he stormed one of the highest citadels of the British press. Now he seems about to do the same in America with the Wall Street Journal.

Kate Moss, of all people, marks a new divide in conservative opinion

The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail are Conservative and conservative newspapers. Nonetheless, they are developing an increasingly different view of life.

Last week the Telegraph carried a picture of the model Kate Moss on its front page wearing clothes from her new fashion collection for Top Shop. The following day, Tuesday, the front page of the paper's business section carried a photograph of Kate being clutched by her billionaire friend Sir Philip Green, who owns Topshop. The Telegraph evidently approves of Kate and Sir Philip.

The Mail, by contrast, doesn't seem to like either of them. (I should remind readers that I write a column for the paper.) For some time it has made plain its disapproval of the flamboyant Sir Philip. It also turned its guns on Kate Moss after her alleged cocaine-snorting last year, while her louche, drug-taking musician boyfriend, Pete Doherty, drives the paper to the verge of distraction and beyond.

So it was perhaps no surprise that the Topshop launch heralded by the Telegraph was greeted by the Mail with tones of disgust. A double-page spread judged Kate's new clothing range to be tacky and overpriced, and raged against "a blind worship at the altar of celebrity".

The wonder is not so much that the Mail should dislike Kate, or even Sir Philip, but that the Telegraph should champion them.

Kate is hardly a wholesome specimen of Middle England, unlike Liz Hurley, its long-time, official pin-up girl. Admittedly, Liz is advancing in years, but surely there are other attractive women coming off the production line who are less controversial than Kate.

It is all rather vexing. Perhaps the Telegraph is in truth more infatuated with Sir Philip than with his protégé. Sir Philip is a friend of Will Lewis, the paper's fashionable new editor, and he made no secret of his joy when Will, prior to his present job, was made the Telegraph's City Editor. The paper's editor-at-large, Jeff Randall, is also friendly with Sir Philip.

Furthermore, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, who own the Daily Telegraph, have in the past had a close business relationship with Sir Philip, but that is a purely academic point since the brothers are adamant that they do not influence the content of their papers in the smallest degree.

While on the subject of the Telegraph Media Group, I should express my surprise that it has signed a printing deal with its arch-rival News International to print its newspapers. When Mr Murdoch's new plants open next year in north London, Liverpool and Glasgow, the Telegraph titles will roll off his presses.

This means that the Telegraph Media Group's much trumpeted plans to spend £150m on upgrading its own presses have been ditched. Is this for reasons of economy?

My main worry is that my new hero Murdoch MacLennan, the chief executive of the Telegraph Media Group, and an acknowledged expert on newspaper presses above all else, may now feel underemployed, and even surplus to requirements, with News International in charge of his printing.