Overlooking Ground Zero in the heart of New York's financial district, Dow Jones's head office was buzzing with chatter and speculation yesterday about life under the company's imminent new owner. Rupert Murdoch's US$5.6-billion takeover of The Wall Street Journal's publisher prompted a mixture of resignation and angst, with frustration that so many members of the Bancroft family had accepted News Corporation's money.

The liberal pressure group MoveOn.org handed out spoof editions of the Journal bearing genuine headlines from News Corporation's Fox News network. Lead stories asked: "Is the liberal media helping to fuel terror?" and "All-out civil war in Iraq: Could it be a good thing?"

MoveOn's Adam Green said: "We want to put Rupert Murdoch on notice that if he turns the Journal into the same unreliable, partisan media outlet that Fox is, people will no longer trust the newspaper."

Outside the Dow Jones building, views were mixed. Mark Wauben, art director of Dow Jones's Barron's business magazine, said: "I'm upbeat about it myself. We'll probably have a lot more resources -- we'll be part of a conglomerate as opposed to a corporation."

But a graphic designer with on the Journal predicted some of his colleagues would be contacting headhunters to find new jobs: "Not many people in the newsroom are happy. Rupert Murdoch blurs the line between what is truth and what is entertainment."

The agreement brought to an end three months of wrangling involving the Journal's controlling Bancroft family. Murdoch's audacious bid also prompted debates around the world about the prospects of editorial independence surviving at the paper. Parallels were drawn with The Times and The Sunday Times, which many observers say have faced editorial meddling by Murdoch since he bought the papers in 1981 despite an independent editorial board.

One of his pledges to the Bancrofts was to create a similar structure for Dow Jones. Yesterday, News Corp announced the inaugural five members of Dow Jones's "special committee", including the retired Associated Press chief executive Louis Boccardi.

The media conglomerate also confirmed it will appoint a member of the Bancroft family or another mutually acceptable person to the News Corp board of directors once the deal goes through -- which is expected to be by the end of the year.

The Bancrofts have pledged 37 percent of Dow Jones's stock to News Corp, securing Murdoch a majority and ending more than a century of stewardship of the group. The sale brings a total windfall of more than US$1 billion to the descendants of Clarence Barron, who bought joint control of Dow Jones in 1902.

The offer of US$60 a share was viewed by many as too high to refuse but a number of family members opposed the deal. A spokesperson for the Bancrofts described deliberations as "long, complex and arduous" and said their votes followed "much soul-searching, hard work and analysis". The family had spent a week considering the offer after the board recommended it to shareholders.

Newspaper heir Dieter von Holtzbrinck stepped down from the board in protest. On Tuesday, another board and Bancroft family member, Leslie Hill, also quit. She said the financial benefits failed to outweigh "the loss of an independent global news organization with unmatched credibility and integrity".

Her relative Elisabeth Goth Chelberg did not agree. "On the one hand it is quite sad, but on the other it was the only reasonable thing to do," she told the Journal. "Now I look forward to a better Dow Jones. It's going to have more money and a world presence and all of the things that it could have and should have had but didn't."

Murdoch said he was "deeply gratified" at the level of support from the Bancroft family and its trustees. "The Wall Street Journal and the other Dow Jones operations will be even more formidable competitors as we profitably extend their invaluable information across our print, broadcast and digital platforms around the world."

Murdoch can be expected to invest in editorial content. John Morton, a media analyst, said Dow Jones had been scaling back the Journal's European and Asian editions - a decision likely to be reversed by Murdoch.

Any changes in editorial direction should be subtle. "It'll be a question of what the Journal doesn't cover, rather than what it does," Morton said. "I suspect the Journal has won the last Pulitzer prize it's going to get for coverage of China."
 
Will editorial integrity be protected?

Against a backdrop of bleak predictions of editorial meddling from Murdoch, one the media mogul's key pledges to the Journal's staff and its controlling Bancroft family was to create a special committee on editorial independence and integrity. The committee - whose members will be independent of the News Corporation, Dow Jones, the Murdoch family and the Bancroft family - must approve the hiring and firing of editors. Its first five members predominantly come from media backgrounds. They are retired chief executive of the AP newswire, Louis Boccardi; Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child initiative to provide computers for children in developing countries; Pulitzer prize-winner Jack Fuller, a former president of Tribune Publishing, who was once editor of the Chicago Tribune; former Washington State Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn and former Detroit News editorial page editor Thomas Bray, who is also a writer for Dow Jones's OpinionJournal.com. Bray will reportedly chair the committee.

The creation of the committee provoked mixed responses. In her resignation letter to Dow Jones's board this week, Bancroft family member Leslie Hill wrote: "I do not believe that a special committee could ever be a match for true independence."

(China Daily via The Guardian August 3, 2007)