Rupert Murdoch's big win
THE BANCROFT family members who held out against the sale of Dow Jones fought the good fight, but the outcome of the morality play that ends with Rupert Murdoch's ownership of the Wall Street Journal was fairly well established from the beginning. The money won.
In this corner, weighing in at $36 per share was a family-controlled independent newspaper that aimed its hard-hitting investigative reporting at big corporations and powerful politicians. In that corner, weighing in at an offer of $60 per share, was the Australian marauder with his global media empire and thirst for profit and influence. The astonishing fact is that the fight lasted 15 rounds.
You have to hand it to those Boston-rooted Bancrofts: They know how to put up a fight.
All of us who care about journalism and the ability of the public to read factual and objective news reporting owe the dissident branch of the family a debt of gratitude. By holding out, they threw into high relief what was at stake. For them, it wasn't just the money. Old-fashioned concepts of legacy and public service figured into the decision of whether to hold or sell.
But in America, media is business, and big media is big business. The Constitution protects the press against government intrusion but it doesn't lift it out of the marketplace. For better or worse, the same forces that shape the destinies of companies that sell soap and cars and soft drinks determine the fates of newspapers. And right now, those forces -- consumer demand, competition for revenue, and new technologies -- are battering the principal source of news for Americans.
The Journal, ironically, was especially battered. While its journalism has been first-rate for a long time, the record on the management side has been mixed. What many of the dissident Bancrofts seemed to be seeking was time to turn the business around and put it back on a more prosperous footing while maintaining its reputation for independence and nonpartisan news coverage.
US newspapers are struggling through one of the most financially difficult periods in their history. The struggle comes at a time when coverage of the nation and the world has never been more important. Newspapers, I'm convinced, will find their way through this financial thicket and emerge as strong presences on the Internet and eventually they will find ways to get consumers to pay for information. I can't imagine that the country could function without a healthy press. Certainly, the founding fathers couldn't imagine it.
But better financial times remain in the distance, and newspapers (and television news outlets, too) are feeling the pain. The sale of the Wall Street Journal couldn't come at a worse time for the industry. Along with everything else, the sale is a psychological blow.
Each fall, I open my graduate class in business and economics reporting by telling students that I will require them to read the Wall Street Journal. I ask them to read the paper carefully, noting its concise and elegant writing, informed stories, and incisive and intelligent use of the facts. I remind them that it's not only government that requires the confidence of people to function. Financial markets also require the confidence of the people, and a key element of that trust comes from skeptical and often aggressive coverage of business and the power people behind our economy.
None of us knows what Mr. Murdoch will do with the Journal. But we can hope that his smart and savvy business instincts will keep him from degrading an institution that is an asset to the nation.
Lou Ureneck is chairman of the journalism department at Boston University. 
