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Rupert Murdoch completes Dow Jones & Co deal

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp, addresses a crowded Wall Street Journal newsroom in New York on Thursday. PHOTO: AP

Rupert Murdoch has completed his more than US$5 billion deal to acquire Dow Jones & Co, adding the Wall Street Journal to his global media conglomerate News Corp and ending a century of control by the Bancroft family.

The changeover is sure to bring significant changes to the Journal, starting with a new management team that was announced late last week. Longtime News Corp publishing executive Les Hinton will be chief executive, while Robert Thomson, editor of Murdoch's Times newspaper in London, will be publisher. Several Dow Jones executives are departing, including CEO Richard Zannino.

Shareholders approved the deal on Thursday by a margin of 60.3 percent. About 78 percent of the company's publicly traded shares were voted for the deal, while 54 percent of the Class B shares, which are largely held by the Bancrofts, were in favor.

Later on Thursday, Murdoch, Hinton and Thomson addressed several hundred Wall Street Journal reporters in the paper's main newsroom. Murdoch, holding a microphone and standing on top of several boxes of copier paper, told the assembled crowd that he had high hopes for the Journal's future.

"I know that change is often difficult or creates nervousness," Murdoch said, according to a transcript provided by News Corp. "If it's particularly nervousness then certainly let us know. We're very accessible people."

"Our aim is pretty simple," Murdoch said. "We have to entertain, inform, enrich all our readers in their lives and in their businesses. We must be the preeminent source of financial information and comment in the world."

Despite a general malaise affecting many US newspapers, Murdoch has said he sees major potential in Dow Jones with the booming demand worldwide for business news and information. He also intends to beef up the paper's online operations and Washington coverage, and is contemplating changes to the Journal's Web site to further open it up to non-paying subscribers.

The deal places Dow Jones into the fold of News Corp, which also owns the Fox broadcast network, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox News Channel, satellite TV businesses in Europe and Asia, MySpace, as well as a large group of newspapers in Murdoch's native Australia, the UK and the New York Post.

Dow Jones also owns Barron's, Dow Jones Newswires, the Factiva news database, several major stock market indicators including the Dow Jones industrial average, half of SmartMoney magazine and a group of community newspapers, which the company has said it is seeking to sell.
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