Intense wrangling among Bancrofts

Members of the Bancroft family have spent the last two days exchanging a flurry of e-mails and letters extolling the virtues and the cons of selling Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, according to a story by Journal reporters Matthew Karnitschnig, Susan Pulliam and Sarah Ellison.

They wrote, “The exchange highlighted the deep and emotional divisions within the Bancroft family, Dow Jones’s controlling shareholder, over whether to accept Mr. Murdoch’s offer. Some family members worry that Mr. Murdoch’s interventionist style of newspaper management would damage Dow Jones, particularly its flagship publication, The Wall Street Journal. But others believe that the time has come to sell.

“The News Corp. offer was ‘a no-brainer,’ said Crawford Hill, one of the family members, in an extraordinary nearly 4,000-word letter sent Thursday night to other family members.

“‘With all due respect it is time for a reality check,’ he wrote. ‘What is missing from this discussion about Dow Jones and the Bancrofts is a sense of historical perspective and evolution. There is a lot of family mythology and outright distortion going on that needs to be set straight, particularly about our legacy.'”

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