You Don't Say

So the Dirty Digger piles into the Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones for a long time provided the controlling family, the Bancrofts, with a happy life living off the dividends and not really doing much with the paper. You may not know the paper. Have a look on the newstands, it's the one with the dense, wordy, front page, a bit like The Times from about a 100 years ago, this dense type is occasionally broken up by engravings, yes engravings, of the people it is writing about.

Exciting stuff

"Bancroft descendant, Crawford Hill, urged fellow family members to vote for a sale last week.
He said the family had not taken an active enough role in overseeing Dow Jones and was now "paying the price for our passivity over the past 25 years". " BBC

You don't say

And the Lex column in the Financial Times agrees that the family were rank amateurs matched against an arch-dealmaker. The family had no coherent position having expended their energies arguing amongst themselves.

Their position was usually "Get Orrrff My Newspaper," like some sort of deranged Long Island farmer. Well now they can leave and fritter away their fortunes on whatever these American Aristocrats deem fit, motor cars, hot and cold running poodles, gilt inlaid, ormolu haemorrhoid cream dispensers.

At least Murdoch has said he doesn't really like the long, wordy, shall we say dull, articles in the WSJ. It'll be fun to see the Journal being shaken up and the fight with the FT.