Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp, has offered up $5 billion to buy The Dow Jones Company, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. This upsets me on multiple levels. I love the WSJ. Without a doubt it is one of the best newsletters around. The writing is stellar. Stories are complex and researched in painful detail. The editorial page always makes me think about things in a new light.

So when I read that Murdoch wanted to buy the WSJ my heart sank. New Corp owns just about everything from a media standpoint. Murdoch and New Corp made their money first with tabloid newspapers in the UK and Australia, which has allowed him to purchase/develop 20th Century Fox, Fox News, Fox Sports, Sky, DirecTV, HarperCollins, and countless other media outlets.

In almost every instance Murdoch has brought his tabloid style of journalism to many of his other papers and media outlets. A case is point is Fox News. Now I want to stress I am not talking about the political leaning of Fox News (this isn’t a political site). I am talking about the type of stories they cover and how they cover them. Graphics all over the screen. Shows being opinion based and not news based. More graphics and sound effects. Lifestyle and gossip presented as news. The list could do on and on.

And of course my thought process and concerns where justified it would seems. From this story in the New York Times: