How incredibly lame is the Bancroft family?

Wow Zac, you are such a right-wing money loving a******. The fact that the Bancrofts selling their paper to a right-wing media monster means nothing to you does it. The fact that murdoch would have destroyed the integrety of the Journal means nothing to you, all you and a***** like you care about is ling your pockets with even more money. You make me sick. Sure the op-ed page of the journal is a den of facist wackos like you and the neo-cons, but the their news operation is still pretty good. All that would have been destroyed had the Bancrofts gave in to this son of a bitch murdoch. Thank god the bancrofts shot this down. Zac, i hope you and Murdoch die horrible painful deaths very soon, like this week. F*** Murdoch and f*** you.

I agree with the opinions of hasan (though not his tenure) Murdoch would turn the WSJ into a weapon to hurt companies that are not following the Right Wing agenda. The publisher of the NY Post and other Yellow tabs should never get his claws on a respected paper/entity such as the WSJ/Dow Jones.

I totally agree with Hasan and Rich.
Zac, you seem like a neocon to me...even though u mentioned in your previous article that you never watch Faux news, your views in this article put you right there with people who stay glued to the tele just to watch Oreilly in liar-liar land.
If you have even a remote concern for journalistic integrity, you would have rooted for the bancrofts...instead of supporting that dumbass Murdoch who puts his political and business interests above all else!
Your last sentence has basically sealed your reputation as a retard...you should be fired for suggesting that they should be ashamed...they're humanists, not money-hogging bastards like you.
GET A LIFE YOU MORON!

The Bancrofts are dumb like a fox (pun intended).

Nothing underhanded, nothing anti-capitalist about it - you're the only one throwing a "hissy fit". Every single non-family shareholder who bought stock was aware of the special voting stock, so they understood the company was set up to protect the company, not 'maximize shareholder value' in purely financial terms. Note: there ARE other values than purely financial ones.

Off to toast the Bancrofts - well done all!

Why is it that leftwingers immediatly launch into personal slurs when they don't agree?The country needs a couple of "right wing" newspapers to offset the NY Times-Washington Post-etc-etc-etc

Kudos to the Bancroft family for spurning the offer. WSj is the best newspaper in the world inspite of its conservative leanings.If taken over by the extremist murdoch he will turn it into the US version of Aljeera....

As a former reporter for Dow Jones, I have watched the Murdoch contretemps with interest. Mr. Bissonnette's comments are spot on. The hypocrisy of the Bancroft family is breathtaking. Dow Jones is a company that has missed opportunity after opportunity. In part that is because Dow Jones culture is not merely averse to risk, it is allergic. Part of this caution stems from management's decision to buy off the Bancrofts with dividends. Too timid to increase shareholder value by taking steps that would raise the stock price, management has bought the Bancroft's silence by spending an outsized percentage of their profits on dividends. Mr. Bisssonette's is completely correct that the Bancroft's fiddled while Rome burned. Now they want to act as the fire department.

Spare me all the crocodile tears about a Murdoch-owned WSJ. The dirty little secret is that the WSJ is a crushing bore. Compare it to the other national papers: USA Today and the New York Times. They can't hold a candle to the Times and at least you don't have to set aside an hour to read USA Today. The dirty little secret is that the Journal is a five-page or so paper. Page one, the outside page of section one, and then the other section fronts. The rest of the paper is filler -- and the exalted reporters who work at the Journal know it.

When the vastly overrated Paul Steiger took over from Norm Pearlstine, he became the anti-Norm. Pearlstine believed in a star system; Steiger dismantled it. As a result, no media outlet of any sort has driven out more first-rate reporters than the sainted WSJ. A partial list: Jill Abramson, Ellen Pollock, Steve Adler, Ron Suskind, James Stewart, Jane Mayer, Eileen Daspin. It's worth noting that arguably the biggest business story of the last five years, the collapse of Enron, was not broken by the WSJ. They were beaten by Fortune, of all things.

And people want to argue that Murdoch will "ruin" the Journal? The reality is that Dow Jones has already wrecked the Journal. With Murdoch in charge, at least there will be a reason to look at the Journal every day.

The Bancroft family is one that i never heard of before this deal. I will say that without knowing all the facts it is hard to know the truth . Please remember that we are relying on the consumer press to give us the scoop.

If in fact they are as ineffective as you suggest I guess we can conclude that this is why one of America's most successful business investors Mr. Buffet hates the concept of inherited wealth.

I do think that the suitor in question has the vision to create a much bigger and perhaps a better company then the Dow Jones we now know.

John