Last-ditch fight against Murdoch at 'Wall Street Journal'

Opponents of Rupert Murdoch's planned takeover of The Wall Street Journal made last-ditch efforts over the weekend to persuade the Bancroft family, which controls a majority of the stock in the financial paper's parent company, Dow Jones & Co, to reject the sale in a crucial vote scheduled for tomorrow.

The 35-member Bancroft family is itself divided, and many of them have come under direct lobbying pressure from The Wall Street Journal newsroom, whose reporters and editors overwhelmingly oppose the deal. On Friday, a key family trust, which controls 9 per cent of Dow Jones's stock, indicated it might now oppose the $5bn (£2.46bn) takeover in an effort to wrest a little more money out of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation.

The Wall Street Journal itself reported yesterday that the vote was now seen as too close to call. The Dow Jones editorial board has already approved a Murdoch takeover, a cash bid at 67 per cent over the company's market valuation at the time it was first made in early May. The Bancrofts are the last line of resistance before the deal goes ahead.

A volley of letters between members of the Bancroft family, which has owned the paper for more than a century, expressed passionate opinions on both sides of the question – with those questioning Mr Murdoch's suitability as an owner counterbalanced by those saying the deal was a "no-brainer" given the dwindling business fortunes of Dow Jones under Bancroft ownership over the past 20 years.

Family member Elisabeth Goth Chelberg wrote: "The family ownership/trust structure, the dividend policy and our lack of requiring management's accountability have put us in the position we're now in with Dow Jones. There is no going back, pre-News Corp's bid, to the way things were."

Leslie Hill, also a Dow Jones director, countered: "The tragedy here is that the world will lose an incredibly powerful voice that will die. I hate to see a rationalisation of why we should sell to Murdoch as yet one more excuse as to why we should not take responsibility for what we own."

She is now siding with Christopher Bancroft, the great-grandson of Wall Street Journal founder Clarence Barron, who has led the charge against Mr Murdoch's bid for the past month. The Wall Street Journal is widely regarded as a benchmark of excellence in financial journalism – at least on its news pages, which are run separately from its conservative, often reactionary opinion pages – whose reputation rests on its fierce adherence to editorial independence.

The union representing Wall Street Journal reporters and editors has been particularly vocal in voicing the fear that a Murdoch takeover would spell the end of that independence. Mr Murdoch himself has pledged not to interfere in editorial policy, and has proposed the formation of a five-member editorial oversight board.

The make-up of that board has been the subject of fraught negotiations in recent weeks. The sale price has not been subject to the same sort of haggling until now – not least because Mr Murdoch has made clear he has no intention of increasing his offer.

On Friday, however, a group of family trusts run by a Denver law firm indicated it was hoping to wrest a 10-20 per cent premium on the sale price for privileged Bancroft family shareholders. The trusts were not opposed to the sale itself, however. Not all the momentum went in the naysayers' direction. One family elder, William C Cox Jr, has indicated he is now in favour of the deal.