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It was the news as soon as I logged into my computer this morning from my West Coast office: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) had made a whopping $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ). The bid was unsolicited and, it seems, entirely hostile to the Bancroft family, who controls Dow Jones and seems to be rejecting the generous offer.It's a cute story, very Guys & Dolls. On one hand we have Dow Jones with its flagship brand, the Wall Street Journal. The paper is everything about wealth -- its very emblem the center of all the world's markets, Wall Street -- the editors are known for their conservative bent, the writers are known for their unparalleled and brainy research, even the design is known for its long-time avoidance of peripherals like color printing and photographs. On the other hand, we have Rupert Murdoch and his gang of vagabonds, from FOX broadcasting (need I really say more than "Next on FOX... Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?") to the vast spoiled brat of recent acquisition MySpace. They're very other-side-of-the-tracks, the kind of news organization that would get a tattoo on its buttocks and then try to slip it in as the senior picture in the high school yearbook.
They're not a match made in heaven. They're a match made for Joe Millionaire, or Broadway. It's not real life; it wouldn't work. Whether or not the money is right, the styles are so vastly different, the respective organizations' reputations so opposite, any so-called "synergy" would be lost before the first page of the merger agreement was drafted.
Not every marriage between two individuals from such different backgrounds is doomed. They do say "opposites attract," and one could point to any number of mergers between very unusual partners, say, Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz (Hank Blue Collar weds Katharina Upper Crust). Exactly. I'm sure you and I could go through and pick out a bunch of similar examples; and in every case we'd find analysis of the merger along with the phrases "culture clash" and "what went wrong?"
Evidence abounds from the world of relationships, both human and corporate: if it seems wrong from a distance, it probably is wrong. How would this work? Would Rupert ask the WSJ to cover more sensational stories, to stop spending so much money on investigative journalism? After all, those FOX News reporters are on the street talking to the people already, why don't they just provide the interviews? Or maybe we could develop the next really hot television special: Behind the News Desk. Oooh, I can just see the shots from the cubicle now.
I'd love to see even one analysis of how this merger-of-unequals would create any value whatsoever. But I haven't. Cultures this divergent won't work together, and while it's clear that the offer from Murdoch is very much putting Dow Jones in play, we'll eventually see a much more circumspect matchup -- the kind of guy Dow Jones can take to the country club.
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