Joseph Menn
The Los Angeles Times
cross posted at Huffington Post

The mogul asks three reporters to stay. Some question how hands-on he’ll be with the paper.

Rupert Murdoch doesn’t yet own the Wall Street Journal, but he’s already flexing his muscles.

In the last two weeks, the chairman of News Corp. has called at least three reporters who were considering leaving the top financial publication and asked them to stay, people familiar with the calls said Thursday.

Some journalists in the newsroom took the gesture as a sign of Murdoch’s commitment to keep the staff’s quality high. Others said it showed that Murdoch would take a hands-on approach in newsroom affairs despite a special committee established to keep him from interfering in coverage.

News Corp. agreed this month to pay $5 billion for Dow Jones & Co., the owner of the Journal.

Murdoch, who has been vacationing in the Mediterranean in recent days, made the calls to the reporters from his yacht, the Rosehearty, named for the Murdoch family’s ancestral home in Scotland.

Murdoch called reporters Tara Parker-Pope, Kate Kelly and Henny Sender, according to five people at the Journal who asked not to be named for fear of upsetting the new owner. Parker-Pope and Kelly were weighing job offers from the New York Times, which Murdoch sees as the Journal’s biggest rival, while Sender was considering a post at the Financial Times, the leading business paper in Europe.

Murdoch told the reporters that they would be making a mistake to leave, that he valued all of the Journal’s coverage, and that positive changes were in store. Since announcing the acquisition of Dow Jones, Murdoch has publicly promised to invest in the Journal and expand its coverage.