Rupert Murdoch and his minions ventured to Brooklyn this month, long enough to scoop up another acquisition: the Brooklyn Paper, the scrappy weekly journal that is edited by the jolly Gersh Kuntzman and has a thriving online presence. The Observer’s John Koblin reported this afternoon that News Corp. rescued the financially troubled publication and that Kuntzman — once a critic of Murdoch — was delighted with the development. “They don’t want the product to change,” Kuntzman trilled to the Observer. “And they love the product. And the product is fantastic.” Gawker (probably rightly) surmises that the move was to increase Murdoch’s control of print-ad space in the city and give more leverage to his baby, the Post. But because we like the Brooklyn Paper, and it was sunny this weekend so we’re still feeling optimistic, we really want to believe it was just because Murdoch thought the little weekly was a great product that he could make even better. Even if it’s not, though, with the expertise and financial backing of such a big company, we’re deliberately choosing to believe the paper will grow stronger.
