By all accounts, Rupert Murdoch loves newspapers. And that makes me want to love him, because you can be sure that his advisors, and even his own children, probably think he's crazy.
Newspapers are so 20th Century, and as the best and brightest in the media world gaze into the future, they do not see newspapers gathering on suburban lawns, or piled high on newsstands.
Instead, they see a world in which readers get their news on mobile devices, a world in which bits of "breaking news" - which could be anything from a presidential announcement to a celebrity pregnancy - take priority over brilliantly rendered feature stories and dense investigative pieces.
Murdoch, however, retains a romantic attachment to words on paper, and for that, old fogies like myself owe him a debt of gratitude.
But clearly there is more to the story of Rupert Murdoch than his romantic attachment to old-fashioned newspapers. The scandal over phone hacking at his News of the World newspaper has offered an insider's view of the ways in which London's tabloid journalists, especially those who work for Murdoch's company, routinely and cruelly violated the privacy of ordinary citizens as well as public figures.
And yes, despite what Murdoch told a parliamentary committee last week, even public figures are entitled to a certain degree of privacy.
Americans who are following the scandal in London might be inclined to think that the slimy world of British tabloid journalism is, in George M. Cohan's phrase, "over there."
American newspapers have their faults, but the revelations about Murdoch's now-shuttered News of the World make U.S. news outlets look tame, pure, and responsible by comparison.
In a sense, that's true. Murdoch's flagship tabloid, the New York Post, may bear the imprint of several British editors who long ago decided that celebrities and gossip were as important as traditional newsmakers.
But they have not dared to import the British tabloid tradition of running photos of topless women on page 3. And, to their credit, they have fostered ground-breaking investigative pieces and launched old-fashioned journalistic crusades aimed at making New York's politicians more accountable.
But British tabloid culture has, in fact, infected American journalism. It has been going on since the mid-1970s, when Murdoch first bought the New York Post and began bringing over British journalists (and some Aussies) who knew little about New York, but lots about American celebrities.
This British invasion often seems to have ended in a total conquest of American media, with Brits popping up at the top of mastheads (Tina Brown, at Newsweek), at the helm of interview programs (Piers Morgan at CNN), in media boardrooms (Howard Stringer, former president of CBS News) and as political commentators (too numerous to mention).
We take this for granted, but we should not. How many Americans, do you suppose, edit British newspapers, or deliver the news on BBC's home service, or comment on British politics for British media?
This is not to denigrate British journalism in the least. BBC America's nightly newscasts are superb, and Britain's Guardian and The Times (the latter a Murdoch property) are wonderful newspapers.
But the wretched excesses of London's tabloid culture often overshadow the brilliant journalistic achievementsof the BBC and Britain's more-serious newspapers.
And, worse, that culture has made its way across the Atlantic. It is impossible, for example, to imagine the celebrity gossip site TMZ without the malign influence of London's creepy celebrity-stalkers. It is impossible to ignore the heavy British tabloid presence in any American scandal, preferably those of the low-brow variety.
Rupert Murdoch did not create the culture of vulgarity and stupidity which are the hallmarks of Britain's tabloid journalism, but he certainly encouraged it, both in London and in the U.S.
The hacking scandal may well give him pause. His appearance before members of parliament did indicate that he was mortified by the excesses of News of the World, but he made it clear that he was not responsible for them.
In a way, he is right. Back in the days when Fleet Street was the center of Britain's newspaper culture, journalistic bottom-feeders regularly prowled the gutters in search of salacious tidbits designed to amuse the nation's intellectual underachievers. Had they the means and technology to hack into the telephones of crime victims - or prime ministers, for that matter - they surely would have done so.
Murdoch is a part of that culture, not the creator of it.
Having brought elements of that culture to the U.S., however, Murdoch now has a chance to reflect on the consequences of his actions and inactions.
If he and his dwindling number of trusted advisors can figure out a way to appeal to tabloid readers without resorting to lawbreaking, or just plain stupidity, he will have done the newspapers he loves a wonderful service.
This would not be good news for attention-starved celebrities, and those who stalk them under the guise of journalism. But that may not be such a bad thing.
