After years of making bad moves, did Bancrofts get one right?

Paul Thomasch of Reuters writes Friday about the multiple bad decisions made by the Bancroft family that controls Dow Jones & Co., the owner The Wall Street Journal, from picking bad executives to run the company to ignoring it outright.

But they finally may have gotten one decision right.

Thomasch wrote, “‘This is a deal that I don’t feel happy about for journalistic reasons,’ said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard University.

“‘But I feel that it would be supremely arrogant to think that in their situation I might not do the same thing,’ he added. ‘I think they are making an economic decision and I don’t think you can blame anybody for that.’

“The heart of the problem is that readers and advertisers are moving away from print and toward digital media, meaning newspapers are suffering from a severe slump in advertising and circulation. That is unlikely to change, experts say.

“There are, moreover, only so many options available to improve finances, most of which involve cost-cutting, like reducing staff levels or production costs.”

Read more here.