Bancroft family, owners of the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, agree to sell firm to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
By: Paul Koepp, Staff Writer
It’s too soon to tell if the impending purchase by News Corp. of Dow Jones & Co. will have repercussions in South Brunswick, a company spokeswoman said.
Dow Jones spokeswoman Andrea Grinbaum said Wednesday that she would not speculate on whether the jobs of any of the roughly 2,000 employees at the facility on Route 1 would be in jeopardy, as Rupert Murdoch moved closer to adding the company to his global media empire.
Members of the Bancroft family, which owns a controlling share of Dow Jones, have been considering selling the company since Mr. Murdoch’s $5 billion, $60-per-share offer in March. Enough of the family agreed to the deal Tuesday to make the buyout a near certainty.
One of the main corporate headquarters of Dow Jones is located on 207 acres on Route 1 in South Brunswick, and it is the biggest employer and tax revenue generator in the township.
The company is expected to pay more than $3.1 million in property taxes in 2007, or about 2 percent of all taxes collected annually by the township.
Dow Jones also provides nearly 10 percent of the township’s jobs, which total 23,457, according to an annual study by the state Department of Labor.
Steve Yount, president of the main Dow Jones union, the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, said he didn’t know how the merger would affect the roughly 950 union members at the South Brunswick facility.
However, he said he had reservations about the reputation of News Corp.
"Obviously, we’re disappointed," he said. "We argued from the very beginning that there was no need to sell Dow Jones."
The IAPE has been involved with Dow Jones since November in contract negotiations, which Mr. Yount said are "difficult, as they always are." He said the main points of contention are over pay raises and health care premiums.
Dow Jones is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, Factiva, and other business news ventures. News Corp. owns the Fox television networks, the New York Post, the online social networking site MySpace and other media operations throughout the world.

