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Investing

Dow Jones (DJ) Controlling Family: More Excuses

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The members of the Bancroft family & company have rejected suggestions from their own lawyers about how to best protect the independence of The Wall Street Journal if Dow Jones (DJ) is sold to Murdoch & Co.

The plan would apparently have created a committee of five members, controlled by the Bancrofts and other Dow Jones interests. This committee could hire and fire WSJ editors. Murdoch’s News Corp (NWS) would have no direct control over the process. The program also called for the committee to set news budgets for some period of time.

The overall outline for a sale of the company would also have put two members of the Bancroft family onto the News Corp board.

After reviewing the proposals, the Bancrofts seem to think that it was not enough. The protections were too thin.

The safeguards are not likely to get thicker. At some point, Murdoch will look at the suggestions and see that he has the costs of owning Dow Jones, but none of the benefits. No one has ever accused Murdoch of being stupid, and this will not be an exception.

DJ shares would be back to $30 soon.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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