Introduction

Abstract

Not long before Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. clinched the deal to purchase Dow Jones & Co. and the Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft family in 2007, one family member, Crawford Hill, sent an anguished, nearly 4,000-word e-mail to his relatives urging them to accept Murdoch’s offer. Family members-owners were “paying the price” for their passivity, which dated back a quarter of a century, he said.