Dow Jones could do worse than Rupert Murdoch

Variety columnist Brian Lowry writes Tuesday that Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, could do worse than being sold to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who has offered $5 billion for the company.

Lowry wrote, “Whatever Fox News Channel and the New York Post’s excesses under Murdoch’s stewardship, GE and other conglomerates have hardly distinguished themselves as champions of blue-blooded journalism, while the Journal and indeed the entire newspaper sector must take some responsibility for its economic vulnerability.

GE already controls news network MSNBC, which, through the introduction of its tawdry primetime “doc block,” seems determined to gradually morph into TCPC, or the ‘To Catch a Predator’ Channel.

“A similar mentality informs the latest addition to business-news sibling CNBC, which introduces a series this week titled ‘American Greed: Scams, Scoundrels and Scandals.’ While positioned as a furtive attempt to expand the CNBC ‘brand’ with more compelling reasons to stay tuned than a stock ticker, the program also betrays an abiding faith in true crime as the most reliable (and invariably lowest) of cable common denominators.

“In part, the collective hand-wringing devoted to Murdoch’s overture to absorb Dow Jones reflects a larger sense of uncertainty plaguing the print community, inspiring defenders of the old guard to cling tighter to our most-revered institutions.”

Read more here.