Categories: OLD Media Moves

Murdoch expects to save $100 million after WSJ deal closes

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday that he expects to save $100 million in expenses after he completes his purchase of Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal.

Gillian Wee of Bloomberg News wrote, “‘We’ve identified low-hanging fruit,’ Murdoch, News Corp.’s chief executive officer, said at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference in New York. ‘The thirst for financial information has never been like this before.’

“News Corp., which agreed to buy Dow Jones for $5.2 billion in August, plans to use the Journal to attract viewers to its television networks and users to its Web sites. The company’s Fox Business Network will begin broadcasting next month to compete with General Electric Co.’s CNBC. The Dow Jones transaction will probably close in two months, News Corp said yesterday.

“‘We’ll have a lot of work to do on it — everything from 24-hour financial news for everybody, to news customized by industry and company,’ Murdoch said. A plan to make the Journal’s Web site available for free is ‘something right on the front burner.'”

Read more here. Murdoch also called CNBC the cable channel for Wall Street.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.