Murdoch's talent is turning business into opera

Emily Bell of The Guardian writes Monday that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s decision to name a 27-year-old opera singer to his board to represent the Bancroft family that owns Dow Jones & Co. is just his ability to mix high comedy with corporate governance.

Bell wrote, “But the shock at the board selection process must be tempered by an understanding that the membership of the board is almost entirely irrelevant to the editorial direction of any News Corp papers. This resides with Murdoch himself and his trusted editors and executives, of whom current Times editor Robert Thomson is likely to have the most input into the Journal. Nobody buys shares in Murdoch with the expectation that his board will tell him what to do. And if that ever became the case they would sell their stock quicker than you could say ‘Figaro.’

“The Murdoch business, like the Bancroft business, is a family one, the difference being that he is rather better at it than they were. But the editorial independence of the Journal will be guaranteed in as much as it sustains a market position. If, like the Asian and European editions of the Journal, it is perceived to be doing rather less well than it might, then it will be more than a tweaking of the tiller. Murdoch, however, does know better than to meddle too much in areas where he is less sound – so, for instance, online, where the Journal has a widely admired website, the rest of News Corp could certainly learn something from their newly acquired asset.”

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