Categories: OLD Media Moves

Name change for Dow Jones Industrial Average?

TheStreet.com mutual fund columnist Brett Arends wonders Wednesday if News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch plans to change the name of the Dow Jones Industrial Average after he purchases parent company Dow Jones & Co.

Arends wrote, “Hello … the Fox Dow Jones Industrial Average? The Fox Business Network Average? How about the Rupert and Wendi Murdoch Industrial Average? (Just kidding.)

“Naming rights to the DJIA may be the surprise kicker to Murdoch’s $6 billion-plus battle for control of The Wall Street Journal’s publisher. Dow Jones spokesman Howard Hoffman confirms that the company’s owner would have exclusive rights to the index and its name.

“Hoffman questions whether Murdoch would want to tinker with one of the most famous names in the financial world. ‘The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an iconic brand,’ he points out.

“True. But so what?

“This is business. And Murdoch is poised to spend more than $6 billion on a company that produced $105 million in operating income last year.”

Read more here.

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.