Formerly opposed to Dow Jones sale to Rupert, Ottaway recants

Benjamin Sarlin tracked down some former large Dow Jones & Co. shareholders on the one-year anniversary of the sale of the parent of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch and discovered that at least one of them regrets all the nasty things he said.

Sarlin writes, “According to [James] Ottaway, Murdoch has not sought to control the editorial page and has impressed him by expanding the paper’s size as well as boosting subscriptions. (Circulation had also been ticking upward under the previous ownership.) Of course, one year of relative editorial independence is not a guarantee.

“‘Things that I spoke about publicly that I feared Murdoch would do, that would be bad for Dow Jones and for the Wall Street Journal, have just not happened,’ Ottaway affirmed. ‘Yet, anyway.’

“He added:

“‘He has done more to keep it going as, what I think now is the best newspaper in America while other publishers have been cutting staff much more vigorously and reducing their coverage and quality.’

“But Jane Cox MacElree, a member of the Bancroft family who opposed the Murdoch deal, said that she had not changed her opinion.

“‘I was not in favor of it,’ she told me, ‘ever.'”

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