• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, August 1, 2007

Start your Murdoch clock: The Wall Street Journal is now in News Corp. camp, and possible business and marketing improvements will ramp up -- but probably not journalistic upgrades.

Watch out for Wall Street Journal associations in News Corp. high-profile properties -- Fox shows like "House," "Bones," or "American Idol."

"Was that a copy of the Wall Street Journal under Simon Cowell's arm while he was walking to an early-run 'Idol' audition?" a TV business reporter might ask next January.

The crusty, hobbling, brilliant Dr. Gregory House might be snidely telling his underlings at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital: "I'm sure the business benefits of some special liver cancer research will find its way into The Wall Street Journal."

On the one hand, Murdoch doesn't really want to blow the independent journalistic nature of the high-profile daily business newspaper. That has been its value.

Yet, on the other hand, he needs to make some money on his $5.6 billion investment -- so product placement and integration, as well as glamorous TV, film, newspaper and magazine connections with his networks will, no doubt, be used to pump out the new Wall Street Journal message.

The biggest lift Murdoch will be looking for is in the Journal's association with his new Fox Business Channel. The initial problem he inherits is that Fox's competitor, NBC Universal's CNBC, has the TV appearances of Wall Street Journal journalists locked up for few years.

This will be Murdoch's next big negotiation. CNBC, being the good business channel that it is, may let that part of the deal expire, for a nice tidy sum, say in October, when the new Fox channel launches.

The Bancroft family controls 64% of the voting stock of Dow Jones. Murdoch got 38% of those shares to go his way. That means there are still some grumbling family members out there -- albeit richer family members. Other grumblers include Dow Jones editors and reporters because of Murdoch's well-documented and persistent journalistic meddling.

But as those editors and reporters who cover business might observe, Dow Jones' recent advertising sales efforts haven't been very robust. The added heft and clout of a bigger media company are needed to compete in a bigger, more complex media world.

So it's not surprising Dow Jones advertising sales executives turned out to be enthusiastic about the Murdoch bid.

For Dow Jones editors and reporters, who follow business closely, big business turned out to be the victor -- but probably not big-business journalism.