absolutely alex’s adventures & times

Pundits can deride Microsoft for walking away from the hostile Yahoo takeover deal as much as they want, but Microsoft can heave a sigh of relief for dodging a bullet.

No, Steve Ballmer was not being all hat and no cattle, as some have labeled his action for withdrawing from the attempt to buy Yahoo after a three-month wrangle.

In the end, it was a smart move by Ballmer and the people at Microsoft.

AP photo

Basically, he listened to his shareholders and his people, who thought it was dumb to pay $47.5 billion for a second-rate also-ran company that did not know a good deal when it hit it in the face, and furthermore let its pride get in the way of its prospects. The fact that Microsoft’s stock declined on news of the unsolicited takeover offer should have been reason enough to convince Ballmer that investors did not think that the proposed deal was a good idea at all. It was a good thing that he pulled out before more damage could be done to Microsoft.

Talk about cheek. Yahoo was trading at an anemic under-$20 a share before Microsoft surprised the industry with its takeover offer in late January, boosting Yahoo’s share price to the high $20s thereafter.

At Microsoft’s $33 a share offer, Yahoo’s shareholders should be busy hiding its glee and just take the money. Instead, it stubbornly clung to the notion that its shares were “undervalued” by Microsoft’s offer and won’t stand for anything less than $37 a share.

Fat chance. Yahoo’s shares had not seen those heights in two years. On what basis would Microsoft justify paying that kind of money for Yahoo to its shareholders?

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang might have been playing chicken, in the hope that Microsoft would blink first and give them a few more dollars per share.

But Yang instead gave Ballmer the out that he was looking for to kill the ill-fated deal.

Now Yang and Yahoo’s board could face a flurry of investors’ suits, at their fury of Yahoo’s folly for rejecting the best deal it could have been offered.

Microsoft should just let this go and forget about going back to the table with Yahoo, despite rumors that this isn’t yet completely finished.

With the $47.5 billion price tag it was willing to pay, Microsoft should look to score a game-changing partnership, not one that would still play a distant second fiddle to Google. It really does not make sense to spend that massive kind of money buying a company that will not have the ability to knock Microsoft’s ultimate enemy out. Remember — eyes on the prize. If it has that kind of war chest to throw around, Microsoft should reach higher and get a truly innovative company or partnership that could break new ground or change the rules of the internet game.

Or it could use that kind of money on research and trend-spotting to get onto the next big wave in internet advertising, internet search or other kinds of networking trend. Microsoft is pretty unique among big technology firms for its substantial cash hoard and just think of the kind of innovations it could come up with, should the money be invested in the appropriate research and development.

Microsoft seems to be pursuing that approach now. Its chairman Bill Gates has just said the company is looking to go down an independent path. “We will make the advances that give people a great choice there,” he said, referring to internet search offering.

Microsoft does need to innovate to beat Google, which dominates internet advertising and search. But partnering Yahoo would not be the way to defeat Google. Microsoft would be better off going it alone, or finding a partner truly worthy of taking on Google. And Microsoft should hang on to its billions until the right deal and the company worth battling for comes along.

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You have got to give Steve Ballmer props for the chutzpah to think big and be aggressive.

So Yahoo turned down Microsoft’s takeover offer.

No problem, Ballmer is cutting off Yahoo’s options by reaching out to one of its potential white knights, New Corporation, instead.

Word has leaked that Microsoft is talking to News Corp to hammer out a plan to jointly take over Yahoo.

Now, that is a brilliant move by Ballmer.

While the talks between Microsoft and News Corp are still at a “sensitive stage” according to the New York Times, think of the scale of that tie-up if it does come to pass.

Microsoft’s MSN network, together with News Corp’s MySpace, and Yahoo’s search engine. It could be a strong company that would be a worthy competitor to Google, the undisputed cyberspace king.

News Corp had been keen to talk to Yahoo as a potential savior and help it fight Microsoft’s absorption. But after some early enthusiasm, News Corp had decided that it cannot fight Microsoft’s war chest. If it comes to an agreement with Microsoft to team up to buy Yahoo, Yahoo would have one less white knight it could turn to for help to escape Microsoft’s grasp.

A Microsoft-News Corp partnership also potentially means a higher bid, something that Yahoo had insisted was its bug bear with Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer. If the amount was raised, Yahoo’s management will find themselves hard-pressed to resist and unable to answer to shareholders if it once again spurned the boys in Seattle.

No one else would even dare to counter offer, or be mad enough to go into a bidding war against the Microsoft and News Corp giants. Which means Yahoo will have to be a reluctant bride.

But Yahoo is fighting back. It has just announced a temporary advertising tie-up with Google. Under the deal, Google will be place ads alongside search results on Yahoo’s website. The pilot would find out if Yahoo could get more ad revenue if it outsourced its advertising to Google.

The two-week trial, Yahoo said, does not mean that it would lead to a partnership with Google. Analysts agree that there are very slim chances for a Yahoo-Google tie-up due to anti-trust issues, but it would be a good opportunity for Yahoo to prove that Microsoft’s unsolicited bid is undervaluing the company.

“We do not think a broader or longer-term Yahoo/Google search partnership would pass regulatory muster,” reckons a Standard & Poor’s note to clients, obtained by the Financial Times. “Nonetheless, we believe such a deal suggests that Yahoo is less likely to accept Microsoft’s current offer.”

Yahoo still has about three weeks left to accept Microsoft’s original offer before Microsoft gets tougher, but has refused to negotiate unless Microsoft sweetens its deal. It might be sweating a little more, now that News Corp seems to have gone over to the enemy’s side.

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This is too hilarious to pass up — Venezuela’s TV station Televen has bowed to pressure to pull The Simpsons off the air as it has been deemed too “inappropriate” for children.

So what did it replace the satirical cartoon with? Baywatch Hawaii.

Which means that for the Venezuelan television authorities, images of women dressed in skimpy swimsuits prancing around in front of the cameras in slow motion are more acceptable than The Simpsons‘ brand of wacky humor.

The country’s TV regulator sees the adventures of the five-member Simpson family as flouting regulations that prohibit “messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents”. Hmmm, and Baywatch Hawaii sends a suitable message to kids?

Perhaps it is the same Venezuelan culture that takes an inordinate amount of pride in their women winning big in international beauty contests that makes it more tolerable for inane and scantily-clad women to be shown in the morning, rather than humor.

The Simpsons was shown during a mid-morning slot. But hang on, shouldn’t kids be in school at that hour? So who is really watching the cartoon at that time?

The station has not banned the airing of The Simpsons completely though. It might still run the program at a different time slot.

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Tibetan Buddhist monks today defied the draconian tactics of the Chinese government by staging a daring and fervent protest of heart-breaking proportions.

They burst onto a tightly-orchestrated news briefing held by the Chinese authorities in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, for a select group of foreign journalists, which Beijing had hoped would beam images of a Tibet now pacified, while telling the story of Tibetan “aggression” in the past week of anti-Chinese uprising by ethnic Tibetans there.

It was poignant to see the young monks, in their crimson robes, valiantly risking their necks by speaking to foreign journalists about the conditions they had had to endure. In front of the world’s cameras, they exhorted reporters not to be taken in by the official line from Beijing, which accuses the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of being behind the unrest.

The monks’ shouts of “Tibet is not free!” exposed the sorry fact that they had been detained in the monastery for over two weeks, after being accused of fomenting more turmoil and destruction. In the melee after the monks stormed the news conference, they were seen being led off by the Chinese security forces, but their fate is unknown, although the authorities had said they would not be “punished”.

China now has eggs on its face a second time, even though it had taken much precaution to ensure that only positive publicity in the country’s run-up to the summer Olympics in Beijing is broadcasted or printed. The lighting of the Olympic torch ceremony earlier this week in Greece was another occasion for Tibetan activists to shine a light on their cause, ruining the photo-op and satisfaction of the Chinese government.

The incidents are a testament to the bravery and impressibility of the human spirit. Violence, censorship and force are not enough to put the determined and passionate people of Tibet and their supporters down.

While pro-Tibet activists are doing their bit all across the world, the world’s government had been shamefully quiet or restrained on China’s crackdown on the Tibetans in China. Only France had created a bit of stir, with its president Nicolas Sarkozy threatening to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics as a response to Chinese brutality.

Other countries had issued toothless statements, while the US had only urged for dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama. Despite the clear violation of human rights by Beijing, President George W. Bush is still expected to attend the Olympics’ opening ceremony. This, even after the Tibetan government-in-exile said about 140 people have been killed in a crackdown on protesters by the Chinese. The US response is another reprehensible example of trade and economic considerations trumping the hollow calls for human rights protection.

“I think this is time the Chinese government and Chinese officials, I think, must accept the reality. I think that’s important. Now in any case we are (in the) 21st century, pretending or lies cannot work,” the Dalai Lama told reporters in New Delhi, referring to attempts to start talks with China over the Tibet issue.

While the Chinese government stuck to its mule-like insistence against communicating with the Dalai Lama, one cannot watch the following video and not weep for the monks and the people of Tibet for what they have to go through.

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What part of “off the record” does the reporter in the Scottish newspaper, The Scotsman, not understand?

While speaking to the newspaper, Senator Barack Obama’s senior policy adviser, Samantha Power, was outed in her comment about Obama’s rival for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton.

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Power said in her description of Clinton to the newspaper, along with throwing the F-bomb with regards to Obama’s performance in Ohio.

Not that I condone Power’s remark one bit. It was childish name-calling, bone-headed and a sign that the campaigns are getting their claws out as the stakes get higher. The point though, is that she had clearly stated that her candor to the reporter was off the record, something which the newspaper itself also did not bother to hide. So why was it published?

Journalistic integrity is in question here. When an interviewee says something is off the record, it should mean exactly that — off the record and not for publication. How could The Scotsman betray that trust in such a spectacular fashion? Was it so caught up with the excitement of having some juicy dirt on the Obama campaign that it would compromise the integrity of the paper for a cheap shot? You can bet that the backlash would come soon and no newsmaker would want to talk to The Scotsman off the record ever again. The publication will henceforth be known as an untrustworthy and it is shooting itself in the foot as people and sources will not be willing to give it information.

While Power’s outburst was ghastly and makes a lie of Obama’s intention to run a positive campaign, away from the old style of negative campaigning and exposes the Illinois Senator’s campaign as disingenuous, it is still appalling how The Scotsman felt such a need to call them out in such an underhanded manner.

Maybe the reporter felt it was time to humble a very condescending Power, who in the next breath belittled Clinton’s supporters in Ohio. “You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive,” Power told the paper.

The Scotsman is unrepentant. “I do not know of a case when anyone has been able to withdraw on-the-record quotes after they have been made. The interview our political correspondent Gerri Peev conducted with Ms Power was clearly on an on-the-record basis. She was clearly passionate and angry with the tactics of the Clinton camp over the Ohio primary, and that spilled over in the interview. Our job was to put that interview before the public as a matter of public interest. It was for others to judge whether the remarks were ill-judged or spoke of the inexperience in the Obama camp,” the paper’s editor said in its defense.

Power is no dumb bimbo. She is a professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a Time magazine columnist, so she should have known better, especially when it came to the notoriously cut-throat British media. She made another faux pas when she spoke to the BBC, suggesting that Obama’s plan to bring back troops from Iraq within 16 months might not come to pass. For her serious lapses, Power deserves to be out of the Obama campaign so that she would not put her foot further in the mouth and cause him more damage. While Power’s holier than thou attitude really does not warrant much sympathy, she did not deserve The Scotsman’s treatment.

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Yahoo must really hate the idea of being bought over by Microsoft, or else its management is living in dreamland. Or perhaps it is just playing the game of extracting a higher price from Microsoft.

In the hope of fending off the Washington-based giant after rejecting its offer, Yahoo started leaking word that it is in talks with companies like Time Warner and News Corporation for a partnership.

Unfortunately, the plan that Yahoo and News Corp is allegedly discussing is uninspiring, to say the least.

The talk is that News Corp will pump money into Yahoo, taking a 20 per cent stake, while redirecting its hugely popular social networking site MySpace towards Yahoo’s care.

But where is the benefit of this for Yahoo?

Yahoo stands to gain eyeballs but that would not help it in the areas that matter, such as working out a strategy to transfer those views into advertising dollars or capturing a bigger share of the internet search market.

Shareholders at Yahoo will surely cry foul at an inferior deal if the News Corp and Yahoo talks work out.

Financially, it does not make sense for Yahoo to walk away from the huge premium that Microsoft has offered it, the stock and cash offering currently to the tune of around $42 billion, which values Yahoo’s shares at $31 each, over the stock’s price of $19 apiece when Microsoft first made its offer about two weeks ago.

Yahoo can expect lawsuits from shareholders if it chose News Corp over Microsoft. It would also make it easier for Microsoft to force out Yahoo’s board members with the reason that it is not working in its shareholders’ best interests. In fact, one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders, investment firm Legg Mason, is supporting the tie-up, if Microsoft would offer a little more.

Given the circumstances, analysts believe Yahoo’s strategy of speaking to News Corp is a calculated gamble to wring a higher price out of Microsoft. Talk is that Yahoo believes it should get about $40 per share.

But Yahoo really does not have much of choice here. If it pushes too hard and turns Microsoft off, it risks seeing its share price plunging.

There are effectively no other buyers out there with the kind of deep pockets, and more significantly, the cash reserves, of Microsoft. No other company would make as bold a move as Microsoft’s. In fact, Microsoft has been seen as over-valuing Yahoo and putting in too high of a bid. Its offer is a great opportunity for Yahoo to cash out, since it is now a middle-aged operator in the tech world, possibly running out of ideas to compete with the likes of Google.

The more meaningful thing for Yahoo to do now is to sit down and negotiate a better price and arrangement with Microsoft.

So like it or not, Microsoft swallowing up Yahoo is pretty much inevitable. Yahoo should suck this up and take the money below it is too late.

Mitt Romney’s five sons campaigned for him extensively, traveling throughout the country with their father and gave media interviews on his behalf. And nobody passes any derogatory remarks about them.

But when Chelsea Clinton works the phones to help her mum Hillary by calling the Democratic Party’s superdelegates for their support, MSNBC anchor David Shuster accuses the Clinton camp of pimping out their daughter.

At least the company was canny enough to do damage control by suspending Shuster. Perhaps it would even be brave enough to fire the idiot. Have they not taught him in journalism school that he should keep his opinions to himself and just stick to reporting the news?

MSNBC and parent company NBC News ought to make an example of Shuster and show that their network will no longer dismiss or take lightly the history of sexist and tasteless comments their anchors have been making, in particular against the Clinton campaign. Another of its anchor, Chris Matthews, had recently had to apologize on-air to Clinton for saying that her campaign was enabled by Bill Clinton’s philandering.

Clinton was right to make a fuss about Shuster’s remarks and ought to stick to her threat of withdrawing from an upcoming presidential debate hosted by MSNBC.

While it is inevitable that once a person decides to run for public office, her and her family are under scrutiny and will be subject to all kinds of comments and remarks, there is no need for the below-the-belt remarks like those hurled by the so-called journalists of MSNBC.

It is especially galling that Shuster chose to use such a reprehensible metaphor on Chelsea for doing what candidates’ children do to help their parents – the misogynistic subtext used to demean her is undeniable and totally uncalled for.

Whether or not you like her, there is no denying the harsh attacks that Clinton’s candidacy has had to endure by a media which obviously shudders at the thought of her being the next president and would be glad to see her fail.

Perhaps she has not buttered them up enough or provided them with the kind of access these often vain and self-serving journalists crave. Or she might have offended some during her long years in public service.

But the likes of MSNBC has to stop with the kind of personal and tasteless cheap shots they have been lobbing. They would have won a lot more respect and credibility had they stuck to attacking Clinton’s policy platforms and record instead.

The very fact that CNN even asked a question of such nature is enough to prove how much of a norm sexism is in the media.

In a CNN blog by Jack Cafferty, he asked if women should feel obligated to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton.

Why is that kind of question even allowed on CNN? And what a sad reflection of the state of the country that a question like that is asked in this day and age.

Oh yes, I forgot. The mainly male journalists, anchors and pundits go into a seizure at the notion of a woman being in charge and hence do not feel in the least embarrassed that they could even think to ask such a blatantly sexist question.

Yup, it’s fine to demean Clinton and women by implying that if Clinton wins, it is not from her considerable strengths as a contender but simply because women supported her due to her gender. CNN also insults women by suggesting with that question that they cannot possibly have the intelligence to choose a candidate based on the issues or whose ideas they feel are more relevant to them.

No, CNN, or Cafferty, believes that women would blindly vote for Clinton just because she is a woman, or else suffer immense guilt for having forsaken a “sister” in her time of need.

What an outrageous premise!

Why didn’t CNN ask if white male voters felt obliged to vote for a white male contender, such as John McCain or Mitt Romney?

Or why weren’t they bold enough to ask if black voters felt obligated to vote for Barack Obama? Simple, because they are afraid of being seen as racist and are entirely aware of the wrath that would bear down on them if they had dared to attempt such a question.

But to them, women are fair game. Yeah, c’mon guys, we can insult women’s intelligence and treat them like emotional teenagers but we will get away with it, so why even bother thinking about how our question might be perceived?

There is no stronger evidence than this to prove that in the United States, sexism and misogyny are alive and well, no thanks to unabashed chauvinism, especially in the media. Despite a few highly-publicized sexual harassment cases once in a while, women are still objectified and demeaned. Just flip onto MTV with half-naked women writhing around, or cable news channels, with their unnatural obsession with covering women who were killed or attacked by male perpetrators.

Don’t forget, in this country, women were only allowed to vote in 1920. Black men got there earlier, when the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, a full 50 years before women were allowed near the ballot box.

CNN and Cafferty’s insult of women and Clinton is more damaging than the two hecklers who told Clinton to iron their shirts at a rally before the New Hampshire primary. The hecklers were not pretending to hide behind a veneer of journalism and fact-finding, they exercised their right to free speech, no matter how odious their message was. But CNN and other media outlet’s way of undermining Clinton and female voters is more egregious, with their masquerade of opinion-seeking, but in reality pushing an anti-Clinton and women-disparaging agenda.

No one should vote for a candidate based on identity politics but the fact is, in the real world, some people do. Elections are not just an intellectual exercise but also an emotional one.

But it is time the media woke up to the fact that Clinton supporters are not on her side only because she is a woman. We want her to be the Democratic candidate and US President because she is competent, intelligent, politically-experienced, passionate and the best qualified to run the country.

And don’t you dare undermine Clinton and her supporters by pulling such a pathetic and sexist stunt.

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Is Microsoft going down the same road as the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner merger with its hostile takeover bid of Yahoo?

Microsoft has offered $44.6 billion in cash and stock to purchase Yahoo, or $31 a share, a 62 percent premium on Yahoo’s closing price on January 31.

Microsoft predicts that the merger would bring about efficiencies that would save around $1 billion annually. As it estimates that the value of online advertising will go up to $80 billion in the next three years, Microsoft is hoping to boost its share of that pie by capturing it together with Yahoo.

On paper, they seem like a good match – the world’s biggest software company hooking up with one of the largest internet media companies.

Both had been leaders in their respective fields but fell short in the online world when they ran up against the 1000-pound gorilla Google, especially Yahoo, as both itself and Microsoft have struggled to match Google’s dominance in capturing the internet search market and online advertising dollars.

The deal is a godsend for Yahoo shareholders.

The company’s shares surged after the news of the takeover offer. Yahoo is currently vulnerable, with its share prices down a third in the past year and recent announcements of slashing 1,000 jobs to cut costs, even as it offered a gloomy outlook for the rest of the year. Its chairman Terry Semel also stepped down in a shakeup, after being deposed of the chief executive position in June.

According to CNBC, Yahoo has over 500 million visitors at its range of media sites including Yahoo Mail, the world’s biggest e-mail service for consumers.

But analysts have justifiably been skeptical of the value of this bid for Microsoft, its most expensive to date.

Even if the deal goes through, many factors still point to the enormity of the work ahead for Microsoft.

For a a start, melding the two different cultures and technologies of both companies will be a huge hurdle for Microsoft.

As a sign of its worry that a brain drain would hemorrhage Yahoo if the deal is successful, Microsoft has tried to overcome the problem by offering generous retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees.

They would also have to sort out how to deal with their similar online services, from instant messaging and email, to news, sports and travel sites. Should they close down the MSN sites in favor of a Yahoo brand, or would there continue to be separate services?

More pertinently, Microsoft is paying a huge premium to be just number two in internet search behind Google and it does not make sense.

Estimates put Google’s share of the worldwide web search market at around 77 percent, while Yahoo is second with 16 percent and Microsoft a distant third with 3.7 percent. Combined, Microsoft-Yahoo would still be a distant second, with just around 20 per cent.

It is hard to see both of them being any more innovative to eat into Google’s dominance by much.

Microsoft-Yahoo would have about 20-24 per cent of the global search advertising market, an analyst at Oppenheimer told the Financial Times. The paper added that Google is estimated to have captured about 70 per cent of search advertising, which accounts for nearly 45 per cent of all online advertising.

Again, it is questionable if Microsoft-Yahoo can come up with new platforms that will steal substantial market share from Google, after Microsoft’s $6 billion purchase of online advertising company aQuantitive last May did not deliver profit to Microsoft’s online services division.

And why is it subjecting the merged entity to the possibility of facing anti-trust scrutiny, not just in the US but likely in Europe too?

The bottom line is, Microsoft and Steve Ballmer are desperate to be a factor on the internet. Despite having spent hundreds of millions to beef up its internet business, Microsoft’s efforts in the area is still not profitable. The FT said that Microsoft’s online services division, while only making up five per cent of Microsoft’s revenues, had been loss-making, to the tune of $510 million in the last half of 2007.

Yahoo’s board and shareholders should be smart enough to take the offer and run as the firm is in decline, but may yet try to extract a few more dollars out of Microsoft.

If the deal finalizes, it would be the largest in the internet market since the $182 billion purchase of Time Warner by AOL in 2001.

We know how that deal turned out. It has often been cited as one of the worst mergers in recent corporate history, as factors such as the incompatible corporate cultures of both companies and predicted synergies that did not occur caused the deal to sour, to the extent that Time Warner is looking to sell AOL.

So good luck Microsoft, looks like you would need it.

Pearson, the owner of Europe’s top business newspaper the Financial Times, is said to be in talks with US conglomerate General Electric to hammer out a deal to jointly buy Dow Jones, whose crown jewels is the US newspaper powerhouse, the Wall Street Journal.

Pearson and General Electric are looking into the possibility of launching a bid to foil Rupert Murdoch’s takeover attempt of Dow Jones with his $6 billion offer made last month.

Dow Jones’ controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, meanwhile is looking at ways to make unsavory Murdoch’s bid more palatable.

They must be wishing and hoping that companies like Pearson and General Electric would hurry up and throw them a bone.

The Bancrofts are faced with tough choices — hold their noses, take Murdoch’s money and run as they’re unlikely to get another offer so attractive. Or watch the share price of Dow Jones go down eventually if they reject Murdoch’s offer. Or keep praying and hoping for a much more acceptable offer, such as from white knights.

Who can blame them?

The Bancrofts certainly don’t want to be remembered as the ones who sold out, choosing a tidy profit over safeguarding the journalistic integrity of one of the most respected newspapers in the world.

Which self-respecting journalism outlet would honestly want to be bought over by Murdoch, the king of shrill, low-brow and populist media, a la the New York Post in the US and News of the World in the UK?

Murdoch is famously meddling in his newspapers’ editorial line. So the Bancrofts rightly fear the loss of integrity and editorial independence of the WSJ under Murdoch’s reign.

On the other hand, the Pearson and General Electric bid, if it comes to pass, would make a lot more sense for the Bancrofts.

Besides the much more respectable reputations of those two companies in the handling of their journalism units, there is plenty of synergy and good fit between the Pearson-GE-Dow Jones merger.

Pearson, who’s strong in Europe through the FT, would complement the WSJ’s dominance in the US. Together, both could conquer the rest of the business reporting world in Asia and Latin America. The only thing they would have to work through is their editorial styles, which is not an easy task but neither is it impossible.

Together with General Electric, the owner of top business channel CNBC, in the mix, the three partners could make a formidable business news team, leading in the print and broadcast areas and being more than able to take on rivals in business news such as Bloomberg and Thomson-Reuters.

GE, with its deep pockets and the motivation to defend its highly-successful CNBC, ought to think hard about cementing its partnership with Dow Jones. This would thwart Murdoch’s grasp of Dow Jones and using its resources to rival CNBC through his upcoming business news channel under the Fox Network banner.

The $60 per share offer that Murdoch threw on the table is financially daunting, even for a giant like GE. It was rumored to have held talks earlier with Microsoft for a joint bid against Murdoch but the high price was insurmountable, leading both Microsoft and GE to abandon talks. Perhaps this time, with Pearson, GE could work something out that would not only be a relief to the Bancrofts and the staff of WSJ, but also stymie Murdoch’s plans.

The WSJ needs to remain authoritative and respected. With Murdoch’s track record, it would not be easy for the WSJ to remain so once it is under his thumb. The WSJ’s integrity and independence stand a much better chance if the Pearson-GE talks succeed and a counter-bid against Murdoch successfully occurs.