Sun Valley, Idaho – News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch appeared frustrated Wednesday with the state of talks with the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Co., saying it was unclear where the company’s controlling shareholders stood.
Murdoch has offered $5 billion for the company but has been entangled for several weeks in negotiations with the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones, largely over their concerns about safeguards for The Journal’s editorial independence and integrity.
“They keep changing their minds,” he said during a conference of top media executives hosted by investment banker Herbert Allen.
Murdoch is a regular guest at the conference, which has become a landmark event for media power players since the early 1980s.
Murdoch didn’t elaborate on the state of play with Dow Jones and declined to comment on a recent approach made to Dow Jones by Brad Greenspan, an Internet entrepreneur who was an early investor in MySpace, a social-networking site now owned by Murdoch’s company, News Corp.
Greenspan and Ron Burkle, who made a fortune investing in supermarket chains, met with representatives of Dow Jones’ board Tuesday, but the talks were exploratory in nature and it wasn’t clear if a viable alternative to Murdoch’s offer of $60 a share would emerge.
