Barron's editor: Should Yahoo buy Dow Jones?

Eric Savitz, the West Coast editor of Barron’s, which is owned by Dow Jones, suggested on his Tech Trader Daily blog that no one would complain at his shop if Internet company Yahoo should consider making a bid for his parent company.

The conversation resulted from Savitz posting an item on the blog by JupiterMedia CEO Alan Meckler making the same suggestion, and then the TechDirt blog stating that the idea wasn’t very smart.

Meckler replied back by stating, “Mr. Tech Dirt is clueless. First of all WSJ.com has over 700,000 paid subscribers to The Wall Street Journal. Name another property online that has such a significant motherlode of valuable subscribers that are paying real money for content? It also has lots of other valuable Internet real estate. And finally, the WSJ franchise has lots of assets that can still be unlocked online not to mention the fact that the so-called ‘low growth business’ which includes The Wall Street Journal print edition is solid gold as a print property and likely to be the last newspaper standing 50 years out.”

Savitz ended the post by stating, “As a Dow Jones shareholder, and someone who has put in close to 20 years working here, let me just say, I think no one around here would complain if Yahoo made a bid at a very large premium. I’d also point out that Dow Jones has a market cap of just $3 billion; Yahoo has a market cap of close to $36 billion. If YouTube, with basically no revenue, was worth $1.65 billion, what do you pay for the leading paid subscription site on the Web?

“And, of course, as a bonus, you’d get this blog.”

Read more here. Dec 12 UPDATE: Savitz now says he had his tongue “planted firmly in cheek.”