By Jack Shafer
from Slate Online

Having bagged his trophy, how long will it take Rupert to bugger it?

The story flows down the page like a Wall Street Journal feature: A passel of haughty heirs controls a major corporation that transmutes every business opportunity into disaster, driving the firm’s stock off the cliff. A takeover bid arrives but melodrama ensues as the heirs squabble-first over the bidder’s character (it’s bad) but ultimately over how much money will be thrown their way as the heirs settle for what they can get.

So goes Rupert and the Bancrofts, in which the family that controls Dow Jones & Co. delivers it to Rupert Murdoch’s own News Corp. family dynasty. For the rotten old bastard-and I mean that affectionately-the Bancroft episode is only one chapter in his multivolume history of double-down wheeling and dealing. But having won the prize, will Murdoch come to regret it as he has so many of his acquisitions and investments and discard it?

The last time Murdoch made a controversial purchase of a family-controlled operation was when he picked up the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1990s from the O’Malleys for $350 million. The team was supposed to be the basis of his big sports media thrust, but after a couple of years he dumped the team.

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