Rival bid for Dow Jones may include family

NEW YORK -- General Electric Co. and Pearson PLC may challenge News Corp.'s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co. with a plan that could let Dow Jones's controlling family to keep an interest in the company, the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported on their websites yesterday.

One option for GE and Pearson would be to allow the Bancroft family to keep a 20 percent stake in the company, reported the Financial Times, which is published by Pearson.

Selling Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, to GE and Pearson would be a better journalistic fit than News Corp., but there is "no rush" to examine the plan, an unidentified Bancroft family member told the Financial Times.

GE owns the CNBC business television channel and will face competition from News Corp., which is launching a business news channel of its own.

Talks are at an early stage and could collapse or result in another structure for a Dow Jones bid, both papers reported.

Such a company would also include Dow Jones's Barron's investment newspaper, 50 percent of the Economist magazine, and interests in business newspapers in Russia, France, South Africa, India and Britain, the Journal reported.

A Bancroft family spokesman and a General Electric spokesman declined to comment. Pearson officials were not immediately available for comment.

Multiple Bancroft family members did not return telephone calls seeking comment or declined to comment.

Dow Jones also owns the Marketwatch.com business news website, Factiva electronic news archive, and Dow Jones Newswires.