Categories: OLD Media Moves

FT parent says it had no intention of buying Dow Jones

Marjorie Scardino, the CEO of Pearson Plc, the parent of The Financial Times, said the company had no intention of buying Dow Jones & Co. but wanted to explore possibilities of combining operations.

Alistair Osborne of The Telegraph newspaper in London wrote, “She said Pearson did not hold any talks with Dow Jones’ controlling Bancroft family, adding: ‘You have got to kick this around when your biggest competitor is obviously going to be sold. But we were never going to commit cash or equity to The Wall Street Journal.’

“She said Pearson and GE explored whether a combination of the FT’s content, GE’s CNBC business news channels and Dow Jones’ news wires could provide a cost-effective rolling service on various platforms, including TV and the internet.

“While these plans were dropped in the face of Mr Murdoch’s punchy $60-a-share offer for Dow Jones, the FT and CNBC continue to examine potential co-operation.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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Barbara says:
July 31, 2007 at 5:29 pm
An FT/CNBC partership is definately a possiblity, especially considering the ties between Pearson and GE (see NewsVisual article about this: http://www.newsvisual.com/newsvisual/2007/07/ge-and-pearson.html). If this is the case, I think that FT would still have a shot against WSJ.