Daniel Golden, former WSJ writer: One of the tragedies of the sale of the Journal is that it never aroused the public outrage that the sale of the New York Times would have, right? I think people looked at it and said, “Big deal. A right-wing tycoon is buying a right-wing newspaper.” But the reality was that for those of us in the news operation it didn’t feel like a right-wing newspaper. It felt like a great, independent, muckraking, thoughtful news and analysis operation that played an indispensable role in American society. People who weren’t familiar with the paper didn’t realize it was an awful lot more than an editorial page.

At the end of last year, family members, staff, ex-staff, and several anonymice remarked on the sale of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch. Daniel Golden in particular says a lot of what I was thinking as I watched the sale and have watched the paper change—particularly becoming more diffuse and less interesting in its coverage. Also, I can’t quite believe I just linked to GQ.