The Bancroft family, which has controlled the prestigious Wall Street Journal for more than a century, is the latest newspaper dynasty to be dismantled in mere months partly under the pressures of the Internet Age.
Its agreement Tuesday to sell Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion to media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. shows how the industry's most powerful families are facing a tough choice: Cash out or watch their fortunes deteriorate as more readers and advertisers migrate to free online news sources such as Yahoo and Google.
Before the recent sell-offs, family-owned newspaper chains were considered the bulwark against corporate ownership, which had already accounted for control of other media businesses such as television and movie studios. For some families, the news-gathering business was not just about the bottom line, it was about performing a civic duty.
But that belief eroded as the dynasties, founded mainly in the late 1800s, entered their third, fourth and fifth generations, expanding to dozens of family members who collected dividends but had little commitment to traditional journalism.
"Journalism is being redefined whether we like it or not," said Robert Decherd, who with his sister controls Belo Corp., owner of the Dallas Morning News, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and the Providence Journal. "The resistance in the news industry to consolidation has declined -- and that's before you introduce the phenomenon of fourth- and fifth-generation ownership."
The Journal's fate was determined by three dozen Bancrofts, who held their stock in a maze of complicated trusts. No family member has had a career in management there since William Cox Jr. retired more than a decade ago.
The Dow Jones sale follows the recent exit of other newspaper clans. In February, the Chandler family, which once owned the Los Angeles Times, cut its 116-year industry ties by selling its stake in Tribune Co. as part of a pending takeover by real estate mogul Sam Zell. Last year, Tony Ridder, scion of the family that once shared control of Knight Ridder Inc. with the Knights, threw in the towel and sold out to Sacramento Bee owner McClatchy Co. after his family had spent 114 years in the business.
Newspaper analyst John Morton, who has consulted for some of the biggest privately owned chains, said the dismantling of newspaper dynasties was reminiscent of the disappearance of small farms.
