Shares of Dow Jones gained almost 2% to close at $59.01 Friday on news that Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times was seeking partners for a joint counteroffer for the company that would compete with Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion bid.
One company Pearson has approached is General Electric, which owns business news channel CNBC.
If, on the other hand, Murdoch acquires Dow Jones, the Journal will compete more directly with the FT in Europe and Asia, and News Corp.’s plans for a Fox News business channel — which would compete with CNBC — will gain traction.
The Bancrofts, who are reluctant to put the Journal’s editorial integrity in Murdoch’s hands, are expected to warm to a Pearson approach, but it is viewed as “a long shot” because of the difficulty of three-way mergers, the lack of a leader, and the expensive problem of cashing out the company’s shareholders.
This is part of the dirty Dow Jones war.
FT?
No way!
If they are not able to fix their own circulation and advertising problems, how are they going to fix Dow Jones’?
INNOVATION consultants Chiqui Esteban and Pablo Ramirez have been working for the last few weeks with the Eleftheros Tipos’ six infographic journalists lead by Kali Labrou.
There are pages with the new infographics posted in Chiqui’s blog.
For the first time, visual journalism becomes a serious business in the Greek press.
Readers and competitors have reacted with surprise.
Nobody expected a change of this proportion.
But a depressed newspaper market like the Greek one needed this big gamble.
All this has been done in less than nine months with a newsroom that understood very quickly that this was not going to be a cosmetic change.
The INNOVATION team spent weeks and weeks in hands-on training for the implimentation of three manuals: editorial, newsroom management and graphic — which included a full design style book and a specific infographics style model.
Michael Fairhead, our production consultant, and former News International production director in Wapping, London, did the fine-tuning of the new full-color presses that print the new ET.
With an extra quality newsprint paper, Eleftheros Tipos has been able to reproduce these graphics with almost magazine quality.
Now wait for the new weekend suplements and magazines.
Tomorrow you will see the first one.
