Cramer: "Patient Hunter" Murdoch First Started Stalking Dow Jones 11 Years Ago

New York:

Rupert Murdoch is a patient hunter. Eleven years ago, when I was running my hedge fund, he called me in to talk about acquiring Dow Jones, the company that, as you may have heard, he's once again interested in buying. Right before he called, I had taken a 4 percent position in Dow Jones and tried to be a shareholder activist--I was convinced the company could make more money from The Wall Street Journal, its crown jewel, and from its Dow Jones newswires. I say "tried" to be an activist because Dow Jones was never really run like a company; it was run more like a vast college newspaper, bent on maintaining journalistic integrity regardless of the business implications. The idea of turning a profit, even as a side benefit, was too sinful for the ultrarighteous management or the clueless-but-revered Bancroft family, which controlled the company through a supermajority stake. Neither contingent was about to listen to a pip-squeak shareholder who actually thought you could make a profit and put out some decent journalism. I remember speaking passionately at the annual meeting about the need to make prudent changes before the losses cut into the Journal's journalistic integrity. Peter Kann, the chairman and CEO at the time, dismissed me with a laugh.

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