Wall Street Journal

Shares of Dow Jones & Co. skyrocketed nearly 55 percent yesterday on news that News Corp. had made an unsolicited offer to buy the publisher of The Wall Street Journal for $60 a share, valuing the deal at about $5 billion. The move would give Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., control of the highly respected business newspaper at a time when he also is building a new business television network, significantly adding to his global media empire. The initial report of the offer by CNBC helped send Dow Jones shares from an opening of $37.12 on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday to $57.30 by 11:22 a.m. The shares closed up $19.87, or 54.7 percent, at $56.20.

Rupert Murdoch's agreement last week to purchase Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the legendarily buttoned-down Wall Street Journal and Barron's, has served to multiply deep-seated concerns over his commitment to the high-quality business journalism for which the two publications are famous and over the future of newspaper journalism in America. A man whose U.S. properties include the screamingly irreverent tabloid New York Post and the Fox News Channel -- which many journalists see as making a mockery of its own slogan, "fair and balanced" -- cannot suddenly take on a mantle of respectability when it comes to delivering real, unbiased news, media observers say. At the same time, some wonder at the wisdom of his strategy of paying an over-the-top price for a stressed media company -- his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones is far higher than its recent market price -- and then expecting to make money on the deal in the long term.

WASHINGTON -- Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. faces no such hurdle in its pending deal to acquire the country's second-largest paper, Dow Jones & Co.'s The Wall Street Journal, even though it owns a broadcast TV network and a national cable news channel that blankets the U.S. Some Democrats contend that such national combinations should be scrutinized as well.

NEWBURGH, Me. -- Here in this tiny town, where they grow their own vegetables, hunt moose, chop firewood and tap maples for syrup, people have no patience for talk about trademark dilution.Bottom line, people here say, a big bully newspaper is picking on a little kids' publication. And they wish the Wall Street Journal would just go away.The Small Street Journal, with its stories, poems, puzzles and contests, was happily into its sixth issue when its founders got a cease-and-desist letter from the Wall Street Journal's parent company.

NOW I KNOW we are living in a new age. Electing Republican majorities in the House and Senate was nice, but it didn't approach the epochal significance of this -- the Wall Street Journal has debunked recycling!If there is any issue on which millions of people have been more hoodwinked, I don't know what it might be. The propaganda machine urging us to recycle has been relentless, moralistic and, according to the Journal, utterly misleading.Listen up, Captain Planet, Barney the Dinosaur, Mr. Rogers and the rest of you commissars.

In the face of a threatened lawsuit, the Wall Street Journal yesterday stood behind its story suggesting that the possibility of Reggie Lewis' fatal heart attack being caused by cocaine use was covered up."We remain confident that the article was fair and accurate," managing editor Paul Steiger said after Boston Celtics chairman Paul Gaston announced the team plans to sue the newspaper for $100 million because of the story, written by Ron Suskind.Gaston said Suskind would be included in the suit.

Jeremy Dorosin is one angry customer. All he wanted from Starbucks, he says, was a working espresso maker -- and an apology.That was six weeks, four Wall Street Journal ads and $10,000 ago. Now Mr. Dorosin, 37, says it is going to take more to make him happy. A lot more."If they thought I was angry before, they have no idea how angry I am now," he said. "I'm not going to go away."Mr. Dorosin, owner of a Walnut Creek, Calif., dive shop, has already spent $10,000 of his own money running a bitter and expensive campaign against the famous Seattle-based coffeehouse chain.

Despite recession and stagnating family incomes over the past decade, spending on toys for kids has gone up 20 percent year after year after year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Christmas season wound up a year in which Americans spent $10 billion on the younger generation.Extravagance? Well, yes. But the WSJ's rival across the seas, the Financial Times of London, tells us we Americans are not all that indulgent. FT's figures show that Germans spent $429 per child compared to only $400 in Sweden and only $384 in the United States.

Washington. -- I like shoplifting. No, I don't mean slinking away with unpaid-for goods. Rather, my fondness is for the annual holiday-season alarms about the billions of dollars lost to shoplifting.Studded with seemingly solid numbers, the worrisome accounts mostly originate with security firms peddling anti-theft gadgets. Somberly and unskeptically accepted by the press, the ensuing echoes are reminiscent of the bloated assessments of the Soviet menace that used to come out of the Pentagon, with precise numbers attached.

DRESSING FOR DINNER IN THE NAKED CITY AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL's MIDDLE COLUMN. Edited by Jane Berentson. Hyperion Press. 346 pages. $10.95.DESPITE AN austere appearance and a name implying dry financial reportage, the Wall Street Journal is known by regular -- readers to contain far more than reports chronicling stocks, bonds, banks and businesses.In fact, the Journal offers some of the finest newspaper writing around, especially the lively, engaging feature stories that grace the daily "middle column" on its otherwise drab-looking front page.

Corporate America is shocked at pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. That Washington appointed him to oversee compensation at companies getting bailouts? Nah. That he thinks people who abused shareholders and crippled the economy don't deserve pay of tens of millions in some cases? Not really. People are flabbergasted he has the stomach to do anything about it. CEOs figured that Feinberg would be like every other paymaster they ever had. That he would rub his chin, act concerned about doing the right thing and then wire the gross domestic product of Nicaragua into their bank accounts.

NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. named Wall Street Journal publisher Robert Thomson as the newspaper's managing editor yesterday, succeeding Marcus Brauchli. Thomson's appointment was approved by a special committee created to oversee the Journal's editorial integrity, New York- based News Corp. said in a statement. Murdoch is remaking The Wall Street Journal, the second- largest U.S. newspaper based on daily circulation, to emphasize more general news and compete with the New York Times.

WASHINGTON -- Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. faces no such hurdle in its pending deal to acquire the country's second-largest paper, Dow Jones & Co.'s The Wall Street Journal, even though it owns a broadcast TV network and a national cable news channel that blankets the U.S. Some Democrats contend that such national combinations should be scrutinized as well.

Rupert Murdoch's agreement last week to purchase Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the legendarily buttoned-down Wall Street Journal and Barron's, has served to multiply deep-seated concerns over his commitment to the high-quality business journalism for which the two publications are famous and over the future of newspaper journalism in America. A man whose U.S. properties include the screamingly irreverent tabloid New York Post and the Fox News Channel -- which many journalists see as making a mockery of its own slogan, "fair and balanced" -- cannot suddenly take on a mantle of respectability when it comes to delivering real, unbiased news, media observers say. At the same time, some wonder at the wisdom of his strategy of paying an over-the-top price for a stressed media company -- his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones is far higher than its recent market price -- and then expecting to make money on the deal in the long term.

Shares of Dow Jones & Co. skyrocketed nearly 55 percent yesterday on news that News Corp. had made an unsolicited offer to buy the publisher of The Wall Street Journal for $60 a share, valuing the deal at about $5 billion. The move would give Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., control of the highly respected business newspaper at a time when he also is building a new business television network, significantly adding to his global media empire. The initial report of the offer by CNBC helped send Dow Jones shares from an opening of $37.12 on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday to $57.30 by 11:22 a.m. The shares closed up $19.87, or 54.7 percent, at $56.20.

Hey, Baltimore's a great place! It says so right there in Frommer's, the popular travel guide. Last week, it rated Baltimore as one of the top 10 "up-and-coming" summer travel destinations in the whole world! Charm City is right there with Barcelona and Belize, the Catskills in New York and the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. This comes on the heels of kudos to the Queen City of the Patapsco from another noted trend-spotting publication - The Wall Street Journal. Last Wednesday, in the coveted upper-left-hand corner of Page One was publicity all the promotional money in the world can't buy. The story - dateline BALTIMORE - told of a house bought for $77,000 a year ago that, after a bit of renovation, sold recently for $300,000.

WASHINGTON - The long war over judicial nominations comes to a head in the Senate this week, but opinion polls show that outside the Beltway, the focus is on issues much closer to home. The disconnect seems to be souring many Americans on the people they sent here to represent them. "The big theme of public opinion about Congress this year has been that they're not really addressing the issues that people really care about, and that goes for both parties," said Carroll Doherty, director of research at the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, which released a poll last week showing poor approval ratings for lawmakers in both parties.

LIFE IS TOO short, Ken Wells says, to drink dull beer. "It is a big, happy world out there, with a lot of pale ales and lagers. I really encourage people to become more experimental," Wells said. This belief that a fellow should drink around is one of the insights Wells came up with after he traveled around the United States sipping suds and thinking about beer. The result of his efforts is Travels With Barley (Wall Street Journal Books, 2004, $25), a look at American beer culture. After reading this book, I called up the author to talk with him some more about our mutual interest, beer.

WASHINGTON - President Bush received a significant bump in the polls in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's capture, with more Americans approving of his job as president and fewer doubting his Iraq policy. But how long will it last? Analysts say the president, who seeks re-election next fall, is sitting pretty for the moment, with the nation's economy on a major rebound and Iraq's former president seized and under interrogation. But they add the important caveat that if violence in Iraq rages on and American casualties mount, Bush could still face criticism of his war policy that will resonate with voters.

Any good editor - and it's widely agreed that Paul E. Steiger is one - would cringe at the phrase "roller coaster ride," especially if it were being used to describe what his newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, has gone through in the past two years. For one thing, it's a cliche. For another, it's inaccurate. Roller coaster rides have some amusing stretches. Roller coaster rides don't leave scars. Roller coasters, as a rule, don't descend into the depths of hell. Again and again since 2001, it has seemed as if that's where Steiger and his staff were.