Murdoch, Journal To Set Up Editorial Board

Report: New Panel Will Serve As Editorial Buffer And Have Say In Hiring And Firing Of Top Editors

(CBS/AP)  As part of the deal package that cemented Rupert Murdoch's longstanding effort to acquire Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., the two sides agreed to create an editorial board that would act as a buffer between the media mogul and the newspaper, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The board, which will appoint new members when existing ones leave, will help determine who serves as the paper's top editors, the Post reported.

The initial board members, according to the report, will be former AP head Louis Boccardi; columnist Thomas Bray; former Republican House member Jennifer Dunn; former Tribune Co. president Jack Fuller; and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab.

Word spread late Tuesday that Murdoch had succeeded in his bid to buy the 125-year-old purveyor of financial wisdom, despite critics who have doubted whether Murdoch — king of the tabloid format, the mind behind Fox News, and owner of properties including The Times of London, Twentieth Century Fox and MySpace — is the right steward for Dow's flagship property, the Wall Street Journal.

The $5 billion deal, which still requires shareholder approval, got the nod Tuesday from the boards of both Dow Jones and Murdoch's News Corp., which waited until early Wednesday to make an official announcement.

The companies said a member of the Bancroft family or another mutually acceptable person would be appointed to News Corp.'s board of directors as part of the agreement.

The Bancroft family, descended over several generations from an early owner of Dow Jones, Clarence Barron, clashed long and hard over whether to sell to Murdoch, with several members saying they feared the quality and independence of the paper would suffer under his watch.

In a statement released early Wednesday morning, a family spokesman said: "It is our most fervent hope that in the years to come, The Wall Street Journal will continue to enjoy, and deserve, the universal admiration and respect in which it is held all over the world."

The Bancroft family initially rebuffed Murdoch in early May, but then agreed to reconsider. Last week, family members heard exhaustive presentations on Murdoch's plans but remained divided.

Wrangling continued past a Monday deadline for them to signal their intentions; the break came Tuesday when a holdout trust agreed to support the deal — apparently after Dow Jones agreed to pay the family's advisers' fees, the Journal reported.

For Murdoch, it was a long, hard courtship, but he ultimately got the Bancroft family — which holds a controlling interest in Dow Jones — to line up 37 percent of the company's overall voting stock in favor of the takeover by the 76-year-old media tycoon.

Not everyone was won over. As the Journal reported the deal on its Web site, it also delivered the news that one member of the Bancroft family, Leslie Hill, is resigning the Dow Jones board in protest of the sale.

Murdoch will be landing one of the great trophies of U.S. journalism and a newspaper that is considered required daily reading among the business and power elite.

The planned sale comes as newspapers across the country face a deepening crisis of slumping revenues as readers flock to the Internet for information and entertainment, and advertising dollars chase them there.

Murdoch had long been interested in owning Dow Jones, but it was widely assumed that the Bancroft family wouldn't sell. In the end, his price of $60 per share — 65 percent over the level of Dow Jones' shares before his offer became public — proved too rich to turn down.

[CBSTV]

Several members [of the Bancroft family feared] the quality and independence of the paper would suffer under [Murdoch's] watch.

Of course, this is precisely what will happen despite the proposed Editorial Board. Murdoch is not paying $5 billion for Dow Jones to operate it status quo. The Wall Street journal will become like any other News Corporation entity.

Note to the Bancroft family: Did you really need Murdoch's tainted cash? Your fortunes are already so great that you could not spend them down in your lifetimes had you tried. What is your legacy now -- that you built up a quality journalistic enterprise over many decades only to sell it to a scourge?

[jm_rvel]

Now we can finaly have a "fair and balanced" daily report on our economy.

[davidmfrey]

Nothing good can come of it...

[rushlimpdrug]

Mr. Murdoch,
I would like to nominate mudrose, mike71067, processor5, singinrick, and peewee herman (for spell checking) to the Editorial Board.
Thank you

p.s. You can find their resumes are inside a cracker jack box.

[jmurrieta1]

Look on the bright side. The WSJ has lost considerable credibility among normal people due to this tabloid takeover. It won't matter if Mordork puts Oliver Wendell Holmes on his "advisory board", now the WFJ is tarred with the *** News / fish wrap brush. Their editorials will be easier to ignore, and their supposedly factual articles will be taken less at face value.

The mask has dropped off.

[king77shaw]

www.zeitgeistmovie.com ...

watched it last night - a must see

[talkingham]

This just makes it official. America's media has been bought-out since the first Iraq "war" and this just makes it all official. Americans need an Aussie billionaire to tell them what to think, read and see. The neoconservatives have made a concerted effort to buy, destroy and control media since prior to the Gingrich "revolution" and we have to fake wars to show for their efforts. Guess we'll be hearing a lot more about Iran in the coming months and very little about Osama Bin Laden. Meanwhile the National Guard is a shambles (though a lot more experienced now for those who remain behind to fight the next fake war).

Anyone who rises too high in the media on the left gets fired, deleted or their plane crashes mysteriously a-la-jfk jr and the two Dem senators who would have won swing states in the 2004 Presidential election. Funny things happen to liberals in the media and in key states coveted by the repubs.

[sharncedar]

How ironic that the editors of WSJ would complain about the same tactics they've been pushing on the rest of America all these years - leveraged buyout and oppression by an ignoramous whose only skill is in raising capital, not running businesses. WSJ celebrated goons like Jack Welch who used similar tactics to destroy the small competitors and the innovation in America, the freedom of competition and thought that leads to innovation destroyed by mountains of money raised by the biggest and dumbest financial goons.

Actually, it is far worse than ironic. If one more media type or WSJ employee complains about this crummy takeover then they should be punished, given 15 years of hell to pay. It means they are worse than misguided, it means they were evil to the core all along. It means everything that WSJ has advocated and stood for was a lie, a corrupt and dirty lie. And since their advice was taken by politicians for 15 years, including the Clintons, that is an enormous betrayal, an enormous crime.

There si no better test of a medicine than to make the doctor take it himself. Looks like WSJ was selling us poison. Let's give them the death penalty.

[avigil2]

And the leader of an evil corporate empire, contiunes.

[hober_mallow]

"... In a statement released early Wednesday morning, a family spokesman said: "It is our most fervent hope that in the years to come, The Wall Street Journal will continue to enjoy, and deserve, the universal admiration and respect in which it is held all over the world."

But in the end, cash talks.

So spare me the sanctimony.