A Dow Jones director resigned Thursday to protest the planned sale of the company to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, publicly siding with those who say such a shift in ownership would undermine the quality of Dow Jones and its flagship, The Wall Street Journal.
The director, Dieter von Holtzbrinck, abstained when the Dow Jones board voted Tuesday night to accept News Corporation’s $60-a-share offer for a stock that was trading at about $36 before the bid became public.
“Although I’m convinced that News Corp. offer is very generous in financial terms, I’m very worried that Dow Jones unique journalistic values will long-term strongly suffer after the proposed sale,” he wrote in a resignation letter…In his letter, he acknowledged that ordinarily, a director’s duty to shareholders is to vote for the most lucrative deal, “except if one can prove that such deal bears risks for the company that overcompensate the financial profits.”
The Board of Directors seems to trust Rupert Murdoch. Hmm. Wonder if anything else influenced their decision?
I doubt the street will really take the Fox Street Journal seriously. This sale could do wonders for sales of the Financial Times.
Many threads raise the isssue of “one world government.” Haven’t seen too many on “one world media.” Faux Noise is just fine in the context of many other voices. As the number of voices decline, so does liberty.
#2 – bobbo,
I couldn’t agree with you more. However, given the recent content in WSJ, I won’t be too sad to lose their voice. At least their editorials have gone wholly over to the right wing-nut side of things. They should fit right in with Fox.
On business news though, they really have been the standard on the street for a very long time. That may change with this takeover. Who knows?
I hope the Rupert gets his prize. That would put enormous pressure on another poorly-performing (financially) media stock: The New York Times.
#3,
Where have you been? The WSJ editorial page has always been right wing nutters. The problem and the cause of the resignation, is this buyout causes them to lose the little bit of credibility that they had.
Pure grandstanding for selfish benefit. Please let me know if he sells his shares for $36 or $60 and then I’ll believe his “integrity” announcement.
Dvorak.org/blog readers can protest News Corp. by destroying their Family Guy DVD’s and never watching the show again.
Much ado about nothing. Murdoch owns some real rags and also owns some of the worlds best papers.
Fox News is just one aspect of his media empire and he chose to let Roger Ailes run it from a center-right perspective because there already were to many center-left and left media outlets in this country. It worked, Ailes was correct when he pitched Fox News to Murdoch as something that was needed and would be embraced by the overall American population. The rating’s prove him to be correct.
When the market only offers vanilla ice cream, the guy who supplies chocolate or strawberry is going to clean house……..thats basically what Ailes has done with Fox News.
To many of the cranky geeks here don’t get out enough, if there wasn’t an audience for Fox, it wouldn’t have lasted a year. If your in the business of making money, you give the customers what they want and you’ll do very well……to many here fail to see that and make very glad that I’m not in business with any of you. 🙂
FT has always struck me as mostly factual. Sometimes slanted, I’ll grant you, but factual. I’d hate to see this deal go through.
#7 – because there already were to many center-left and left media outlets in this country
I can’t actually think of what those might be.
I had lunch with someone from the Financial Times. She said a lot of people at FT believe Rupert will wreck WSJ (headless broker found in topless exchange???) and push people to her paper. So, they’re big supports of the purchase.
I tend to agree. While in England I picked up the London Times. It’s not much of a newspaper and certainly not nearly as good as the Telegraph or any major US paper. Some British friends told me that the quality of the Times has declined since Murdoch took over.
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#8 I think that FT (the pink one, right?) is owned by the New York Time Company, not Dow Jones.
I do not get the big deal here. Rupert seems to be the only guy who still knows how to run a print paper and make money doing it. He offered a very good price and is a newspaper guy at heart. From a business stand point this is a no brainer.
Scott, you’ve got it wrong. A Murdoch buyout would make the Journal editorial page more liberal. Murdoch insists on his personal preferences for the editorial page, and he supported Tony Blair with his papers in Britain. He is likely to support Hillary this time around, so look for the editorial page to be a little more liberal. It’s the news pages that are likely to be more conservative, which would make them balanced, as the news side is the second most liberal paper according to one study.
#14….MikeN…..your correct in that….Murdock has had a large fundraiser for Hillary in New York already and has contributed to her past Senate campeign and the current presidential run. He was a big Blair backer, though I haven’t heard anything about if he supports Brown as yet.
#10 Rob R….the Times of London is one of the oldest quality newspapers in the world and has I believe increased circulation since Murdoch bought it. His editorial commentors are some of the finest writers of both Conservative and Liberal viewpoints in the English speaking world. They range from Gerald Baker in politics to Andrew Sulliven(hardly a raging conservative), and Anatole Kaletsky to Simon Jenkins. The editorial page has gone the guantlet in the last 8 months from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Richard Dawkins. The paper has been behind more investigations of goverment funny business than the BBC and won more freedom of information suits than all the other daily’s in the UK togeather.
I would say thats a pretty good newspaper.