Murdoch finalizes deal to buy Dow Jones

NEW YORK – Rupert Murdoch has sealed a deal to buy Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones &Co. for $5 billion, ending a century of family ownership and adding a crown jewel to his global media empire, News Corp.

The companies said early Wednesday morning that they signed a definitive agreement after the deal won sufficient support to pass from a deeply divided Bancroft family, which has controlled the storied newspaper publisher for generations.

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

Had it continued on its own, The Wall Street Journal would have faced a brutal slump in print advertising that is plaguing the newspaper industry as well as fierce competition in the market for delivering business news.

Now that it’s part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, Journal publisher Dow Jones &Co. will have access to several things it would have had a tougher time finding alone: capital to invest in new digital distribution channels, ready access to multiple media platforms, and more muscle to compete against rivals at home and abroad.

Many had opposed the deal, both within Dow Jones and outside. Numerous people posting on a discussion board on www.WSJ.com promised to cancel their subscriptions, and Leslie Hill, a member of Dow Jones’ controlling shareholder group, the Bancroft family, quit the company’s board in protest.

In her resignation letter, Hill said that while the “short term financial benefit is difficult to deny,” she also believed that it was “not enough to outweigh the potential ramifications of the loss of an independent global news organization with unmatched credibility and integrity.”

At the same time, senior Dow Jones executives acknowledged the tough road the company would have had to slog had it elected to remain a standalone entity and the new opportunities the company has for expansion under Murdoch.