WSJ reporters, editors hope for another bidder

A group of about 15 Wall Street Journal reporters and editors met in a conference room at the paper’s headquarters Friday and said they hoped to find another bidder they could endorse, according to New York Times reporters Eduardo Porter and Louise Story in an article for Saturday’s paper.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has offered to buy Dow Jones & Co., the owner of the Journal, for $5 billion, but many of the business journalists who work for the paper and its other media properties oppose the deal.

Porter and Story wrote, “Several Journal reporters said that, in their view, the best outcome would be one in which The Wall Street Journal remained an independent entity.

“E. S. Browning, a financial reporter at The Journal, said he opposed any large company’s purchasing of Dow Jones. ‘When great newspapers get acquired by big conglomerates, they subsequently cease to be great newspapers,’ Mr. Browning said. ‘I don’t think that big conglomerates or big diversified media empires would have the same dedication to the paper that the Bancrofts have had.’

“Many in the Journal newsroom have not hidden their discomfort with Mr. Murdoch’s bid. Dozens of reporters and editors wrote to members of the Bancroft family asking them to reject the News Corporation offer.”

Read more here. Porter and Story also report than some journalists at the Journal have started to look for new jobs as a result.