Why isn't anyone blaming the Bancrofts?

Adam Hanft writes on The Huffington Post that the media has been all over News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and what he might do if he acquires Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, but no one has blamed the Bancroft family that controls the company for its current situation.

Hanft wrote, “These guys were asleep at the switch, and now we’re supposed to grieve because they were popping corporate Ambien? I mean, c’mon now, these are supposed to be the smartest observers of business on the planet. Shouldn’t that have given them at least some very small, very tiny inkling of the profound challenges that were gusting through the competitive media and financial landscape? Shouldn’t they have had a strategy for leveraging the power and trust of their brands in a world where content is the proverbial king?

“But this king, like most royalty, wasn’t the sharpest Ticonderoga in the battered pencil cup. Year after wasted year, Dow Jones and the leadership of the Journal were in the pole position, and they totally blew it. They couldn’t have been closer to the action if they had their nose in hedge fund cocaine.

“Consider that they had a clear-eyed view of where the future was going, plus tons of money to invest and a ferociously loyal family to support their vision. So why did Dow Jones allow some parvenu, history-free media company — from Canada, no less — to grow to the point where it could acquire Reuters, and by doing so indirectly put their beloved Journal into play, because it could no longer prosper as a stand-alone entity?”

Read more here.