Dow Jones Goes Down Under
The media melodrama is over. Apparently enough of the Bancroft family will accept Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion Faustian bargain for the Wall Street Journal.
But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls. At a family meeting Monday night, the Journal reported, one of the matriarchs, 77-year-old Jane Cox MacElree, argued against making the deal with the Devil by invoking the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl.
“He put his life on the line for the paper,” Ms. MacElree said, citing the reporter who was kidnapped and killed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Ms. MacElree was supported by daughter, Leslie Hill, a Dow Jones director and former airline pilot, who waved a quarter-inch-thick manila envelope filled with letters from Journal reporters and editors who protested a deal with News Corp.
“She said it was their voices that mattered.†the Journal reported. “In a halting speech, she was on the verge of tears as she talked about the reporters’ dedication to their jobs, and told family members they owed it to the Journal‘s rank and file not to sell the paper, according to participants.â€
What’s remarkable about this prolonged struggle is not that the various branches of the Bancroft family finally succumbed to Murdoch’s offer that doubled the market value of their holdings but that so many resisted for so long.
In the era of corporate journalism, it’s sad to witness the loss of another leading family-owned company with the principles expressed by Ms. MacElree and her daughter, but there is a kind of cold comfort in seeing that such sentiments still exist.
Their time may have passed, but Murdoch’s won’t last forever, either.
Cross-posted from my blog
9 Responses to “Dow Jones Goes Down Under”
Wow. I had missed that story. Agree entirely with your conclusion. What I fear is that the conglomerate that replaces Murdoch’s will be even larger, more monolithic than his. I worry about Murdoch’s politics influencing the pages; I worry more about the loss of diversity through consolidation, regardless of the politics of the consolidators.
“I worry more about the loss of diversity through consolidation,”
ME TOO.
Plus, consolidation usually means job loss, which means less in-depth coverate.
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The fourth estate is our only means of understanding what’s going on in government. It is vitally important to our democracy that the media be vibrant and independent- speaking out when no one else will about executive excesses and uberinfluence of corporate lobbyists on Congress and the presidency. I didn’t agree with the WSJ’s editorial page, but at least they were owned independently.
“But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls.”
Huh? I can’t understand what all this fuzz is about. The Bancrofts lost their soul long ago when they allowed the opinion pages of their ‘respected’ paper to become a hotpot of far right wing nuts, shameless lobbyists, and supporters of an extreme capitalism, with no one at the WSJ trying to correct even the most blatant lies and made up ‘facts’that were published in that section. At least this part of the journal can’t get worse under Murdoch’s ownership.
Oh, and somehow this is a perfect example that every bad deed gets its reward: The Bancrofts never showed any scruples when the WSJ’s columns promoted a predator-style capitalism. Now they fell victim to Tyrannosaurus Rex Murdoch. Deserves them well.
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no one at the WSJ trying to correct even the most blatant lies and made up ‘facts’that were published in that section. At least this part of the journal can’t get worse under Murdoch’
Actually, I had noticed this myself, and was shocked by it. Most recently that occurred when the WSJ presented Wolfowitz’s side of the WB controversy as fact in one of their editorials. It helped perpetuate the myth that the Euros at the Bank wanted him out because he was trying to end corruption. Not quite the balanced view. But, anyway, I agree with Gray.
Yeah, ’cause that couldn’t possibly be true.
And of course, whenever someone of questionable scruples posts an op-Ed in NYT or some other “respected” paper, we get reminded that we shouldn’t criticize because Op-Eds don’t reflect the opinions of the editorial staff. I guess the same standard doesn’t apply to the WSJ though.
It turned out not to be true, CS- or at least it wasn’t the reason he was ousted.
I don’t think the major concern is whether the editorial pages will be biased in favor of the ‘Right’, since that’s already the case. The bigger concern is how much Murdoch’s stamp will affect the news pages and the paper as a whole.
In all his other ventures, Murdoch has shown a single minded drive to sell, sell, sell the product without the least care for its quality. A number of businessmen (on Charlie Rose, for example) have expressed the observation that Murdoch can’t resist managing and directing every aspect of his properties. That’s what’s scary.
What is even scarier is that he always gets his way.