Timberland (NYSE:TBL) is recently up 71c to $17.13. The Wall Street Journal has frequently reported in the past that TBL is exploring a plan to sell itself. TBL over all option implied volatility of 76 is above its 26-week average of 50 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price fluctuations.

Options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

Timberland (NYSE: TBL) is recently up 87 cents to $16.64. The Wall Street Journal has frequently reported in the past that TBL is exploring a plan to sell itself. TBL December and January option implied volatility of 48 is near its 26-week average of 46 according to Track Data, suggesting flat price fluctuations.

EnCana (NYSE: ECA), a leading North American natural gas producer, will be holding its 2008 Outlook Meeting on December 12th. WTI Crude Futures are up 0.87% to $88.25 according to Bloomberg. ECA overall option implied volatility of 33 is near its 26-week average according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional price fluctuations.

Daily Options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) closed at $14.21.

• ETFC lowered its EPS guidance, increased its provision for loan losses. ETFC will take additional security impairments and exit and restructure some non-core business.
  
• Goldman Sachs (NYSE-GS) lowered its 12-month price target to $16 and removed ETFC from its Americas Buy list. Smith Barney says: "If its bank regulators took a more holistic view of ETFC's regulatory capital, it could result in a forced deleveraging."
  
• The Wall Street Journal reported on 8/22 that TD AmeriTrade (NASDAQ: AMTD) is in merger talks with ETFC. Jana Partners & SAC Capital Advisors LLC in late May encouraged ETFC and AmeriTrade or Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) to consider a combination.
  
• ETFC overall option implied volatility of 60 was above its 26-week average of 44, according to Track Data, suggesting larger price fluctuations.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

The main union representing newsroom employees at Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ) better hope it can settle its contract dispute with the publisher of the Wall Street Journal before Rupert Murdoch completes his $5 billion acquisition of the company.

Dow Jones is taking a tough line with the 2,000-member Independent Association of Publishers' Employees (IAPE), making it a final offer of a three-year contract with 3% raises in each year with sharply higher health care costs, according to Editor & Publisher. Members of the union may call for a strike vote as soon as this weekend, the publication said.

This dispute comes as the Australian tycoon is trying to make nice with the editorial staff at the Journal, personally trying to talk some people out of taking jobs at competitors. He's also promising to make significant investments in the Journal.

But Murdoch wants to be nice to the Dow Jones employees on his terms, not the union's. News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) shareholders also are going to keep a close eye on the costs of integrating Dow Jones into the rest of Murdoch's empire.

The IAPE may have little choice but to accept a bad contract now and hope better times will come later. That's not great news, but then again there's very little of that for employees in most media companies.

Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (NYSE: DJ)'s Wall Street Journal (a.k.a., Rupert's Rag, a.k.a. The Towel) occupies a unique spot in the media firmament. As I pointed out earlier in the year, it changed its format and now looks to me like a Holiday Inn bath towel. And since News Corp (NYSE: NWS) has finally won over enough Bancrofts to take control, I have officially changing this column's name from Towel Talk to Rupert's Rag, which will continue to offer a perspective on its news and views.

AP reports that Murdoch's victory is complete. As I said in today's New York Sun, I think that a sufficient portion of the Bancrofts succumbed to Murdoch because they were unable to afford the cost of the shareholder lawsuits that would have been directed their way had they turned down his $60 a share offer. If the Bancrofts had turned down the offer, the stock would have fallen back at least to the $36 it traded at before May when Murdoch announced the offer ... and the board would have been the target of lawsuits from angry shareholders. Also highlighting the Bancroft's poverty, Murdoch was able to get enough votes by offering to pick up the $30 million tab for legal and financial advice to the Bancroft trusts.

Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (NYSE: DJ)'s Wall Street Journal (a.k.a., Rupert's Rag, a.k.a. The Towel) occupies a unique spot in the media firmament. As I pointed out earlier in the year, it changed its format and now looks to me like a Holiday Inn bath towel. And since it appears that News Corp (NYSE: NWS) has finally won over enough Bancrofts to take control, I am officially changing this column's name from Towel Talk to Rupert's Rag, which will continue to offer a perspective on its news and views.

Reuters reports on an internal memo at The Rag, which confirms that "The Bancroft family has accepted. Dow Jones will be part of News Corp."

Details of which Bancrofts accepted and which did not will no doubt be forthcoming. The New York Times (permalink) reports that family members and trusts representing about 32% of the shareholder vote indicated they would support Murdoch's offer.

Can the soap opera around Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ) get any weirder?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that board member Leslie Hill is pushing the media company to find someone -- anyone really --- to buy her family's media company besides Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS). So far the only potential buyers that have surfaced are supermarket mogul Ron Burkle and MySpace co-founder Brad Greenspan and neither has proposed an offer to top Murdoch's $60 a share bid.

Burkle is supposedly meeting with a special committee of the board today to press his case, which involves some sort of employee stock ownership plan which is how real estate tycoon Sam Zell is funding his acquisition of Tribune Co. (NYSE: TRB). The supermarket magnet, who also tried to buy Tribune, has the backing of Dow Jones' main union, which has argued that a sale to Murdoch would be a calamity.

The Greenspan offer for part of the company is a non-starter. The Journal is reporting that he wants to buy half of New York-based Dow Jones. It remains unclear which half Greenspan would buy and how this would benefit the company other than to keep it out of the hands of Murdoch.

This whole process, including the discussion about creating a committee to protect the Journal's editorial independence, underscores how desperate the Bancrofts are to protect their family's reputation. Though their concerns about Murdoch are justified, I find their sanctimoniousness hard to swallow.

Ever since Murdoch made his unsolicited bid for Dow Jones, the Bancrofts have shown more passion for their family business than they have in years. Pity it's too little too late.

There is little doubt that the days of the Bancrofts controlling Dow Jones are coming to an end. All that's left for the family to do now is to swallow its pride and cash Murdoch's $5 billion check.

Boo freakin' hoo.

Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (NYSE: DJ)'s Wall Street Journal (a.k.a., The Towel) occupies a unique spot in the media firmament. As I pointed out earlier in the year, it changed its format and now looks to me like a Holiday Inn bath towel. Towel Talk offers a perspective on its news and views.

Rupert Murdoch is right about one thing -- The Towel could save some serious money by getting rid of the dead tree form factor.

The New York Times [registration] quotes Murdoch as saying "What if, at The Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global - a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks. How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you'd make a little bit of money."

The Bancroft family, who control Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ), need to get their stories straight.

First, the New York Times reported that the they rejected a plan crafted by their lawyers to protect The Wall Street Journal from meddling by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (NYSE: NWS), which has made an unsolicited $5 billion offer for the media company. Reuters followed up with a story in which a Bancroft spokesman attacked the Times story as "a gross mischaracterization of the process" whatever that means.

This is more of the same nonsense. As I've argued before, the interest being shown by the Bancrofts in the Journal is really late in coming. Moreover, any committee pushed by the Bancrofts designed to "protect" the editorial integrity of the Journal is doomed to fail.

First of all, this system will create a bureaucracy that will lead to political infighting whose viciousness will be breathtaking to behold. It will be a disaster. Decisions will be made at glacial speed, something which Dow Jones can't afford in today's fast-paced digital age.

The Towel's management knows that it doesn't have much time left. So it's trying to fit a career's worth of strategic decisions into its last few weeks of independence.

Yesterday, as Doug McIntyre posted, it announced a series of management changes which I find hard to decipher without an in-depth knowledge of the various players. And today, the New York Times [registration required] reports that The Towel is raising its newsstand price 50% to $1.50. This increase will not affect the 90% of people who subscribe to The Towel.

First, it was Rupert Murdoch who offered $60 a shares for Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ), a premium of almost 80%. He has been rebuffed by the company's founding family, but they have finally agreed to a series of meetings with him to determine if The Wall Street Journal can keep its editorial independence.

Next came LA billionaire Ron Burkle. He made an unsuccessful attempt to buy the LA Times. Press reports are now circulating that he will join with labor unions at the publisher to make a bid.

And, yesterday Brian Tierney, who lead the successful effort to take Philadelphia's two dailies private, said he was interested in a possible offer.

What may be telling is that no other media company has made a bid for Dow Jones, although there is certainly a case to be made that it would fit well at McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP), which owns BusinessWeek, or Pearson (NYSE: PSO), which owns The Financial Times and part of The Economist.

It may be that media firms are worried that a company that only has about $125 million in operating income can't justify a price of $5 billion.

On paper, the media companies are right. The deal does not pay for itself.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

When I read Rupert Murdoch describe Monday's meeting with the Bancroft family that controls Dow Jones & Co.
(NYSE: DJ) about his $5 billion offer for the company as "constructive," I immediately thought of North Korea. Every few months, some diplomat describes talks with the secretive communist country as "constructive." Then as now, I wonder what that actually means.

Does the News Corp (NYSE: NWS) CEO consider it a good sign that the Bancrofts politely listened to his promises not to interfere with the news-gathering process at the Wall Street Journal? I wonder if Murdoch sounds more credible the more times he makes the same point over and over again.

Murdoch is balking at the demands of the Bancrofts that would give the independent board set up to protect the Journal the power to hire and fire top editors, according to The New York Times, which said the meeting lasted more than five hours. Some sort of compromise will be worked out.

Though I share their skepticism of Murdoch's promises of non-interference, I do not have much sympathy for the Bancrofts.

The family watched passively as incompetent managers drove Dow Jones into the ground. The company's present CEO, Richard Zannino, is doing a good job with the bad cards he's been dealt, no thanks to the Bancrofts who supposedly are so concerned about protecting their beloved Journal from the evil Aussie media mogul. This interest in their family legacy is too little too late.

In a spectacular waste of money, the main union representing Dow Jones workers said late yesterday that it's hiring advisers to explore alternatives to the company selling itself to News Corp. As I've argued before, Murdoch's lust for power will trump any buyer's lust for profits.

Like in most other things, Murdoch will get what he wants. It's time to face reality.

The New York Times business editors probably don't like The Wall Street Journal. The Dow Jones' (NYSE: DJ) paper has more resources and usually gets the big news out first.

Odd then that the business section for The Times appears to have broken the story that the editors at the WSJ were aware of the News Corp (NYSE: NWS) bid for Dow Jones long before they reported the information. The New York Times piece on the subject even raises the key question: "What are a news organization's obligations to report important market-moving news about itself or its parent company before the news is officially disclosed?"

Another issue is that it appears that options activity in Dow Jones stock was high ahead of the announcement of the offer. So, someone probably leaked the information. If the Journal had reported the Murdoch offer news when it was received, this might not have happened.

It is an embarrassing moment for Dow Jones. The argument for not letting Mr. Murdoch in is that he might want to influence the news. Murdoch might decide to put his finger on the scales and decide what he wants readers to see.

Well, the editors at The Wall Street Journal can no longer throw stones at Mr. Murdoch and his meddling. They live in a glass house.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

This morning's Wall Street Journal, the one shaped like a Holiday Inn bath towel (I'll call it the Towel), breached the separation between the news and editorial pages by keeping the biggest news story of the day off of its front page. The Towel should have plastered the front page with a deep analysis of the wide ranging implications of Apple Computer, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone. But I think the editorial page editors' rage at Al Gore and Steve Jobs kept that from happening.

To be fair, the Towel did have many stories about the iPhone. Apple Storms Cellphone Field [subscription required] graced page A3. Apple Shines Tech Shares As Stocks Sag led on page C1; Apple May Justify Hype trailed on C14; and Apple's iPhone: Is It Worth It? filled out much of page D1. This is quite a bit of coverage for Apple -- but I can't imagine why it decided to lead with a story on how Towel publisher, Dow Jones & Company Inc.'s (NYSE: DJ) competitors are trying to sell national advertisements through a joint venture with Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

These stories are besides the point. The real action in the Apple coverage is on the Towel's editorial page. Apple's Gore was Holman Jenkins's pointless rumination on his internal conflicts about the success of Apple's business, his unspoken frustration about how Democrats Al Gore and Steve Jobs are benefiting from it, and his angst that the backdating scandal -- which he feels is much ado about nothing -- has left Jobs unscathed. And Should Steve Jobs Go To Jail? hints that just as Jobs got off for backdating, so should the authors' client, Brocade Communications Systems Inc.'s (NASDAQ: BRCD) former CEO, Gregory Reyes.

The irony of this is that publisher, Gordon Crovitz, recently crowed about how Towel reporters uncovered the backdating scandal last year. But I guess the Towel couldn't decide how to handle all the internal conflict created by Apple's iPhone announcement. As a result, the Towel's dirty laundry kept it from plastering the front page with what could turn out to be one of the biggest business stories of 2007.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, and a Professor of Management at Babson College. He subscribes to the Wall Street Journal but doesn't have any financial interest in Apple, Brocade, Dow Jones, or Yahoo.