And of course it should be heavily discussed, because a potential $5 billion hostile takeover is obviously going to make waves in the industry. But it appears that the Bancrofts, the family that has a controlling interest in Dow Jones, plan to use their 52% of stock voting power to thwart any potential deal.
Murdoch, the Aussie-born chairman and CEO Of News Corp., is of course no stranger to media. He built The Australian and The Weekly Standard newspapers from the ground up, and of course the cable network Fox News . While the content of the latter may be controversial, it's undoubtedly lucrative - and proof positive that Murdoch knows what the public wants.
Twenty-six years ago, Murdoch also took over The Times of London and Sunday Times in the
David Kirkpatrick of Fortune Magazine sees a Murdoch takeover as a good move for Dow Jones, because despite the fact that Murdoch is a 76-year-old geezer, he seems to be the only mogul who really understands the huge impact the Internet is going to have in all media over the next decade.
Murdoch got MySpace for a steal at $580 million back in 2005, which was peanuts compared to the $1.65 billion Google shelled out for YouTube. He is now expanding MySpace into China, because Murdoch understands the global significance of social networking and its advertising possibilities.
And Fox Business Channel is supposed to launch later this year, so having The Wall Street Journal, the premier financial newspaper, within Murdoch's arsenal would surely strengthen the brand. Murdoch told The New York Times that if he is successful in winning over the Bancrofts, he would like to rename the channel with "Journal" incorporated somewhere within it.
But besides his business acumen, Murdoch is also known for his hands-on, in-the-trenches rapport with his editorial staffs - often doing his own layouts and photo croppings - in contrast to the laissez-faire approach by many other paper owners of his stature.
With the exception of Harold Evans, most of Murdoch's current and former editorial staffs praise his style, and most say that he doesn't force his famously conservative political leanings on his workers. Staffs on The Times of London and Sunday Times were allowed to endorse different candidates in the U.K.'s last general election, though it was widely known that Murdoch himself supported Labour Party leader Tony Blair.
Evans, on the other hand, claims Murdoch did force his politics on the paper, and diluted the Times' standards for the sake of commercialism. Evans is a former Times managing editor who was forced out of the job after clashing repeatedly with Murdoch, and claimed that he was encouraged to show support for then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
He hated the experience so much that he wrote a book about it, "Good Times, Bad Times." Some see Evans' book as nothing more than the airing of sour grapes. Obviously there are going to be adversarial relationships and disagreements in a big city newsroom.
And there are few people - if any - who have been in more big city newsrooms for longer periods of time than Rupert Murdoch. Sure, many people see Murdoch as an arch conservative.
But The Wall Street Journal is already seen as a very conservative publication, so even if Murdoch did try to exert his political influence, it probably wouldn't change the content all that much.
And again, Murdoch has proven that he understands the Web better than most moguls, so I say let's give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he can do with Dow Jones.
