News Corp. Offers $5 Billion For Wall Street Journal

In a surprise move, today it was announced that News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (pictured right) has made an unsolicited bid for The Wall Street Journal of $5 billion. The Wall Street Journal made an official statement:

"Dow Jones & Company today confirmed that its Board of Directors has received an unsolicited proposal from News Corporation to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Dow Jones common stock and Class B common stock for $60.00 per share in cash, or in a combination of cash and News Corporation securities.

The Board of Directors and members and trustees of the Bancroft family, who hold shares representing a majority of the Company's voting power, are evaluating the proposal. There can be no assurance that this evaluation will lead to any transaction."

The implications of the proposed deal are staggering. Already the world’s largest media organization, News Corp. owns 175 different newspapers, book publisher HarperCollin, Fox Interactive (which includes MySpace, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, AskMen, AmericanIdol.com, Fox.com), TV Guide, The Weekly Standard, leading UK television network Sky TV, DirectTV, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, FX (cable network), and the National Geographic Channel.

Murdoch’s most high profile print media asset is The New York Post, a paper often criticized for its controversial covers, right leaning politics and tabloid tactics (largely led by its Page Six section). The acquisition of The Wall Street Journal would not only add a hefty amount of blue chip credibility to the News Corp. media fold, but it would also place the leading business news source on the planet in the hands one man.

The Wall Street Journal itself today published a story about the offer, mentioning the Washington Post Co., the New York Times Co. and Bloomberg as other potential suitors in what could become a heated bidding war. Nevertheless, many will see the sheer audacity of the offer by News Corp., a company already on the edge of a media monopoly, as a signal that the deal must not be allowed to close.