By Bruce B. Brugmann
Yesterday, when I was going back and forth with my source in Contra Costa County on how Singleton papers covered the Reilly settlement story in the East Bay, he mentioned that Murdoch had made an unsolicited bid to buy the Wall Street Journal. My source, a natural born news junkie, monitors breaking news during the day. I leafed through my copy of the Journal and couldn’t find any such story and promptly forgot about it.
This morning, opening up the Journal, I found that the paper played the story as its lead on the front page, under a two column headline, “Murdoch’s Surprise Bid: $5 Billion for Dow Jones, High-Premium Offer Spotlights the Family That Controls Publisher.” Unlike the Hearst and Singleton press, which used the bury and mangle approach to its big media stories involving their own monopoly deal, the Journal played the story as the big story it was.
The front page story jumped to a full page inside the first section. And a front page box titled “In the Headlines” listed three inside stories: “Murdoch sees digital future” and “Bancroft family holds control through dual-class stock” and
“Offer reflects lofty premium for a strategic property.” There was also a chronology box, “From Handwritten to Online: l25 Years of Journalism,” on the front page of the “Money and Investing section” along with two major stories.