Tags

Here was former Dow Jones board member James Ottaway Jr.'s reaction to the news that the Dow Jones board was ready to approve the sale to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.:

It’s a bad thing for Dow Jones and American journalism that the Bancroft Family could not resist Rupert Murdoch’s generous offer.

It’s a sad thing that the 105-year family tradition of protecting Dow Jones independence as a public trust will end.

I hope Rupert Murdoch, and whoever follows him at News Corp., will keep his promises to protect and invest in the unique quality and integrity of the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and all the Dow Jones electronic news services.

And I hope the Bancroft Family, which has been torn apart by Murdoch’s poison pill offer, will enjoy family peace after so many years of patient and caring support for Dow Jones and its people.

At this global information age, it is outrageous that anyone should have to pay an estimated $30 million to outside advisors. It is ironic indeed for the Bancroft family to have to pay 30 shekels of silver to their investment bankers, and 30 shekels of gold to their corporate lawyers, for scaring some of them into betraying their 105-year family loyalty to Dow Jones independence.

• 4 comments

On a recent Saturday, James Ottaway Jr., the retired newspaper executive, attended a wedding in Rhode Island. The bride, a young artist named Xu Jin, was a longtime friend of Mr. Ottaway’s.

Years ago—long before Mr. Ottaway gained national attention for publicly opposing Rupert Murdoch’s ongoing attempts to buy Dow Jones--he had received a phone call from Bob Bernstein, one of the founders of Human Rights Watch. Mr. Bernstein told Mr. Ottaway that the daughter of one of the longest-held political prisoners in China would soon be matriculating to Bard College where Mr. Ottaway was a trustee. Could he help Ms. Xu settle in?

Over the years, Mr. Ottaway and his wife Mary had helped numerous foreign students come to the United States to study at Bard. Along the way, they had done whatever they could to make the young foreigners feel at home in rural New York. They had taken them skiing. Bought them dinner. Arranged field trips. Gone on hikes in the mountains. Mr. Ottaway told Mr. Bernstein that he would be happy to help out.

In the coming years, the Ottaways looked after Ms. Xu. In the meantime, back in China, her father Xu Wenli remained in prison for the crime of supporting democracy and publishing a pro-democracy journal called the April Fifth Forum.

On Christmas Eve, 2002, the Chinese government finally released Mr. Xu. That night he and his wife jumped on a plane to the United States. When they arrived in New York they had no place to stay. So their daughter appealed, once again, to the generosity of the Ottaways. While the family regrouped, Mr. Ottaway put them up in his apartment on East 9th Street.

“I have a personal connection with the effects of news censorship in China,” said Mr. Ottaway recently. “That’s the reason I got particularly worried about Murdoch owning Dow Jones.”

It was several days after the wedding, and Mr. Ottaway was on the phone from his office in New Paltz, N.Y., ruminating on the subjects of censorship, democracy, archeology, Rupert Murdoch, hiking, Homer, and the onetime imprisonment of his friend--the erstwhile father of the bride.

“At the time, you couldn’t find out that he was in jail if you didn’t read the foreign press,” said Mr. Ottaway. “You couldn’t find out from a Murdoch outlet in China, Star TV, which is completely censored for any news that would disturb the Chinese government. They just parrot the Chinese communist government propaganda line. To me, that’s disgusting. It has a human impact. It puts people in jail. It gets people murdered.”

“When you meet someone who has been in jail for sixteen years, it’s no longer an abstraction,” he added.

Over the past several months, ever since News Corp.’s bid for Dow Jones became public on May 1, Mr. Ottaway has become a thorn in the giant paw of the Mr. Murdoch’s ambition. From the get go, Mr. Ottaway announced that his family, which controls 6.2 percent of the Class B controlling “super” shares of Dow Jones, wouldn’t be selling to the media carnivore from down under. Behind the scenes, he whispered his misgivings into the Bancroft family ears. Publicly, he questioned the members of the family who were pushing for a buyout.

“If the Bancroft Family has decided that it may not be able to protect the independence of Dow Jones and its crown jewel, the Wall Street Journal, as a stand alone company in a more competitive media future,” Mr. Ottaway wrote in one of his publicly released statements, “then I hope they will refuse Murdoch’s offer and find a more trustworthy guardian of the high standards of journalism the family has heroically protected for 100 years.”

Mr. Ottaway’s faith in the heroics of good journalism can be traced back to his family dinner table. He grew up in a newspaper family in the small town of Endwell, N.Y., along the southern border of the state, just outside of Binghamton. His father owned the Endicott Daily Bulletin, a newspaper in a nearby town. At age sixteen, Ottaway the Younger went to work reporting for his father’s daily, writing features, covering accidents, and chronicling small town life. “I loved it,” recalled Mr. Ottaway. “I thought it was very exciting.” Next Page >