Murdoch Would Bolster WSJ's Digital Presence

The letter has it all - bold print, bullet points, and italics.  It’s 1,200 words long.  And it’s signed by billionaire Rupert Murdoch.  That’s right - Murdoch’s most recent communication regarding a Dow Jones takeover has been published by The Wall Street Journal, a Dow Jones property.

Which may not have been what the billionaire intended.  “We are disappointed, as I imagine you are, that the details of our proposal and the discussion of the merits of a potential combination have become a matter of public debate,” he wrote to the Bancroft family (which owns Dow Jones).  Yet the letter was unfailingly courteous, and modesty ruled the day.

Murdoch did, however, hint at the ways in which News Corp. could help Dow Jones.  “Dow Jones is already a leader in content and digital media with three of the world’s leading paid-subscriber financial news sites,” he admitted, but, “We would enthusiastically build upon this success by leveraging the scale we have built in digital media.”

One almost wonders if Murdoch is thinking about MySpace; it and the Wall Street Journal probably don’t share many fans, and given MySpace News’s