The irresistible rise of one media baron and the inexorable fall from grace of another is exemplified by the diverging career paths of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. One seems likely to succeed in his attempt to buy Dow Jones, an international publishing company. The other is facing the prospect of a 35-year jail sentence for stealing from his own companies. Mr Murdoch, 76, and now at the end of a remarkable career, is close to fulfilling a life long ambition, to own one of the world's great newspapers. An Australian, who became an American citizen in order to advance his US corporate interests, Mr Murdoch may well secure one of that country's prize publishing assets, the Wall Street Journal. As for Lord Black, a long spell in jail may now be ahead. A Canadian who renounced his citizenship to become a British lord, he may yet find himself stripped of his peerage.
A hallmark of the Murdoch approach to media acquisition has always been his aggressive pursuit of the business deal, as reflected in his success in acquiring family-owned newspapers from deeply divided families. In 1968 his takeover of the News of the World, which served as the financial foundation in the development of a global media empire, was a case in point. Today in Boston an equally divided Bancroft family, who hold a controlling stake in Dow Jones, will meet to decide whether his offer, which he has admitted is "insanely high", is one they can really afford to reject. The $5bn (€3.6bn) offer from News Corporation values the company at two thirds more than its pre-bid valuation.
Many of the world's great newspapers are still in the hands of family dynasties, like the Bancrofts, the Sulzbergers of the New York Times, or the Grahams of the Washington Post. And for years their enlightened ownership has helped to uphold high editorial standards.
As newspaper owners, they have preferred to invest long-term in journalism rather than to opt for short-term cost cutting expedients, in response to financial pressures. While such cutbacks might help inflate earnings and lift a company's stock price, the real cost would be a noticeable loss of journalistic quality. In adopting this stance, they have also been greatly facilitated by their operation of a restrictive dual share structure, common in some newspaper companies. This allows owners to keep control and to exercise a veto over the direction the company may take. It also leaves other investors, who have no effective voting rights, powerless to intervene.
The downside of this model, however, is that as newspapers in the US, as elsewhere, face increased competition from the internet, and as their circulation figures and advertising revenue decline, so too does the share price of many of these publicly traded companies.
This is where Murdoch steps in with his bid to buy out the interest of the Bancroft family, accompanied by a solemn assurance that every one knows neither he, nor his successors, are likely to keep: to preserve the editorial independence of the Wall Street Journal.