Dow Jones to sell out in 2006?

That’s the prediction of Peter Newcomb at Forbes, who writes today that he thinks that the Bancroft family, which controls the majority of stock in the company, will sell Dow Jones, including the Wall Street Journal. Read the entire posting online here.

Here is his prediction:

“The Bold Prediction
The Bancroft clan finally throws in the towel on its languishing newspaper fortune and sells Dow Jones (nyse: DJ – news – people ), publisher of The Wall Street Journal. News Corp. (nyse: NWS – news – people ) owner Rupert Murdoch would love to get his hands on the vaunted broadsheet, but the winning bid comes from the dark horse tandem of Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRKA – news – people ) and The Washington Post (nyse: WPO – news – people ). ”

My take: The WSJ and the Dow wire would be in better hands journalistically with Berkshire Hathaway and the Washington Post as the owners. I would imagine that nothing would change at the operation if they were the new owners. If Murdoch was the new owner, then there might be changes — at least in the news content, but not in the Journal’s editorial page, which is conservative.