Media Watch

What your local daily newspaper will look like soon

When (not "if") Rupert Murdoch buys Dow Jones
What will he do with Ottaway Newspapers & CC Times?

By Walter Brooks

Murdoch WILL be successful in acquiring the Wall Street Journal. As a mega media  mogul acquaintance told me this week, "it's a done deal."  The reasons are common sense; the D-J stock price is half what it used to be, and the Bancrofts know what will happen to the share price if Mr. Murdoch withdrew his offer.  Jim Ottaway's 5% will not stop a massive sell-off, and the family members know this.

Murdoch will handle the buy as he did the Times of London and The Australian by setting up a cushion between the editorial and corporate and give the Bancroft family a seat on his News Corp. board. Those newspapers did not suffer from his ownership, but most others did.

Everything else Mr. Murdoch owns is tabloid, from Fox News to Fox-TV to his newspaper holdings.  Few recall that he once owned the Boston Herald and turned it into a typical tabloid, as he has done more recently done with New York Post.

So what about Cape Cod Times? 

Convential wisdom dictates that Murdoch will dump the Ottaway Newspapers a.s.a.p. when you acquires Dw Jones which owns them, something the owners themselves have been doing for a decade.  But my gut instinct tells me the sly, old fox will want to keep the Cape Cod Times because it's Ted Kennedy's hometown newspaper, just like he has been willing to lose  over $200 million in the past decade running the NY Post in Hillary Clinton's hometown.

So I bet he keeps Cape Cod Times but turns it into the wildest tabloid of all. We offer own own version above on right.

The word around the local daily newsroom is that the minute Murdoch takes over he will cashier everyone above copy editor.