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A reflection on the WSJ, the Bancrofts and Rupert

The deal is done! Rupert has pocketed the Wall Street Journal - which, if reports are correct, he has wanted for some time as part of his media empire. Whether the outcome of the acquisition is good one will still need to be determined.

Meanwhile, Alexander Cockburn, writing in the CounterPunch Diary, gives an insightful, if personal, background to the Bancrofts, the WSJ and Rupert:

"Was there ever a luckier clan than the Bancrofts, whose elders okayed the $5 billion sale of the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. on Tuesday. There’s been some solemn talk about the Bancrofts’ “stewardship of this national institution” since they acquired the Dow Jones company a century ago. In fact the Journal was an undistinguished little sheet till a journalistic genius called Barney Kilgore decided in the years after World War II that a businessman in San Francisco should be able to read the same paper as one in Chicago or New York. Kilgore devised the technology to do this, along with the paper’s reportorial stance, serious but often humorous, in the style of the Midwest which is where Kilgore – a Hoosier -- was from.

Kilgore made the Bancrofts really rich and they continued in that state for almost half a century though their stewardship was either indifferent or inept, beyond the pleasant chore of raking in the money. Now they can trouser Murdoch’s gold and trot off into the sunset, mumbling that they have extracted all the usual pledges from Rupert Murdoch that he will respect the Journal’s editorial independence.

Surely the 76-year mogul must quake with inner merriment as he goes through this oft-repeated rigmarole, which I listened to almost 30 years ago when he bought the the Village Voice. So far as I can remember Murdoch issued a pledge to us not to fire the editor as he stepped into the elevator on the fifth floor of the Voice’s offices on University Place and by the time he stepped out on the ground floor the editor had already been dismissed, as if by osmosis and Murdoch’s man was settling into the editorial chair.

The only reason why Murdoch might respect the Journal’s independence, at least in the opinion pages, is that the views expressed there are even more rabid than his own, and perhaps Murdoch savors the possibility that one day he might call up Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor, and hint that he might moderate his tone."

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