Rupert Murdoch said last night he had a "constructive" meeting with the family that controls Dow Jones & Co over his $5 billion offer for the company that owns the Wall Street Journal.
Mr Murdoch and son James, met key members of the Bancroft family, which holds 64 per cent of the voting power in Dow Jones, for the first time in New York.
"We had a very long and constructive meeting," Mr Murdoch said as he left the meeting at the offices of the Bancroft family advisers.
One focus of the five hours of talks was safeguards to preserve editorial independence at the Journal,which is a key concern for the Bancrofts, as well as editors and reporters at Dow Jones.
The union representing over 2,000 Dow Jones workers, the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, said yesterday it had retained advisers to seek alternative bids that could better protect the publication's "unquestioned journalistic integrity".
Mr Murdoch's News Corp. is willing to explore a policy similar to one Reuters Group employs, giving a board of trustees the power to block any deal and prevent any one shareholder from owning more than a 15 per cent stake without the trustees' consent, the Journalreported.
