Dow Jones: Dum da dum dum

I received this press release from Dow Jones last night (saw it this morning):

Dow Jones & Company(NYSE:DJ) said that a director who is a representative of the Bancroft family, Michael B. Elefante, has informed the Dow Jones Board of Directors that:

“After a detailed review of the business of Dow Jones and the evolving competitive environment in which it operates, the Family has reached consensus that the mission of Dow Jones may be better accomplished in combination or collaboration with another organization, which may include News Corporation.”

Accordingly, the Family has advised the Company’s Board that it intends to meet with News Corporation to determine whether, in the context of the current or any modified News Corporation proposal, it will be possible to ensure the level of commitment to editorial independence, integrity and journalistic freedom that is the hallmark of Dow Jones.

“The Family also indicated its receptivity to other options that might achieve the same overarching objective.”

In that connection, Mr. Elefante informed the Board of Directors that representatives of the Bancroft family would be meeting with representatives of News Corporation, including Mr. Rupert Murdoch,solely to discuss the issues related to journalistic integrity raised by the News Corporation proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Dow Jones common stock and Class B common stock. Mr. Elefante advised the Board of Directors that there was no assurance the discussions would lead to a proposal satisfactory to the members of the Bancroft family. Mr. Elefante further indicated to the Board of Directors that all aspects of News Corporation’s proposal, including the price and the terms proposed by News Corporation, could be the subject of subsequent negotiation by the Board and the Bancroft family.

In light of this information, the Board of Directors has determined to consider strategic alternatives available to the Company, including the News Corporation proposal. The Board of Directors also indicated that are representative of the Board of Directors would be present at the Bancroft family’s discussions with Mr. Murdoch and News Corporation.There can be no assurance that any transaction or other corporate action will result from this exploration of alternatives or that the Board of Directors or the members of the Bancroft family will support any specific proposal received by the Company.

On a personal level, this makes me a bit nervous. As I’ve written here in the past, my wife works for Dow Jones, which means a large chunk of our livelihood — not to mention our retirement and health insurance — could be on the line if something goes down.

On a larger journalistic level, folding the Journal into a news media empire that relies on selling sensationalism and whose corporate management has never been afraid of directing coverage to favor its business interests cannot be good for the industry.

On a local level, there are concerns as well. Dow Jones is South Brunswick’s largest taxpayer, paying about two cents on the dollar (last I checked). hat might News Corp. — or some other entity — do with the Kilgore Center on Route 1? The printing plant makes it a valuable commodity, but there are no guarantees. Any significant change in use could reduce Dow Jones’ tax responsibilities, shifting them onto the rest of the township’s taxpayers — meaning we could see higher taxes here.

All in all, not the kind of news I wanted to wake up to this morning.

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Stark notions

Baseball fans might consider this heresy, but Jayson Stark thinks Andruw Jones is not quite the centerfielder he’s been built up to be. His argument — a good one that will cause me to reconsider some of watch Jones more closely — is that he is getting to fewer balls and has sacrificed much of not only his hitting but his fielding to hit homeruns.

Andruw is a man who has built his reputation around his Gold Glove parade, his exceptional ability to glide around center field and suck sure-thing doubles out of the sky without overheating a single sweat gland. But while most of us weren’t paying attention, Andruw was slowly, apparently imperceptibly, losing the part of that gift that made him special.

Hmmm. His numbers have been declining defensively, Stark writes, but few have really noticed — though the scouts appear to be onto it.

“I first noticed it two or three years ago,” he said. “Just from sitting there, scouting, watching balls dropping in that should have been caught. I’m not talking about balls that needed to be dived for. I’m talking about balls that should be caught.”

I surveyed other scouts. They’d begun to see the same things. Not getting the same jumps. Not reacting. Not putting in the defensive effort he used to. His body getting thicker. A sudden obsession with home-run hitting over everything else.

“He was a great defender,” said one scout. “He’s slipped. People used to compare him to Mays and Mantle. I wouldn’t put Andruw anywhere near those guys. Now he’s become an offensive player, and his defense has suffered ever since.”

So, who is the best defensive centerfielder? That’s a subjective thing and one that is difficult to gauge unless you can see the players play, in person, everyday. For isntance, I’ve always thought that Jim Edmonds, as good as he used to be, was overrated, a bit of a hotdog.

Carlos Beltran is outstanding, but he plays too deep and can be tentative on some balls — though I think he may have the best and most accurate arm.

Ichiro Suzuki, former corner outfielder who is in center for the Mariners this year, maybe the best. Statistically, he tops the charts, getting to more balls than anyone else without making an error. Coco Crisp also is having an outstanding season, showing a lot of range. (Torii Hunter, on the other hand, has an absurdly low put-out total for a guy who plays everyday — maybe he’s a bit overrated a, as well?)

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Runner’s diary, Thursday

Today, for the first time since I’ve been running, I experienced an ache that has me a little concerned. As I approached the mile-and-a-half mark of my run today (I did three miles, though I had hoped to do four), the lower part of my hamstring just above my left me seemed to tighten up and I had trouble fully extending. I tried to run through it (yes, I am an idiot), but it wouldn’t loosen up.

I’ve had aches and pains before — occasional knee pain, sore feet, a slight calf pull — but this is different, mostly because I don’t know what it is. It is still quite tight and stretching did little to help. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I did three miles in about 28:45 despite the pain. Today on the iPod, disc 2 of Bruce Springsteen’s The River, sometimes called sides three and four.

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Keep the Jamesburg library open

Derrick Z. Jackson, the great columnist for The Boston Globe, comments today on two trends — the TV watching habits of the extremely young and the closing of public libraries around the country — connecting the dots and sounding an alarm for our future.

What struck me about the column as much as anything was the timing — Jamesburg, as I’ve written before, may ask its voters to close its library as a way of dealing with two realities: its regularly tight budget and a new state levy cap law that limits the growth in a town’s tax levy. Jamesburg says the combination of cap levy and library funding mandate means they will have to cut from other services.

Jamesburg Mayor Tony LaMantia blames the state, but New Jersey has a rather farsighted library funding law. Towns that have public libraries are guaranteed a minimum amount of funding and can only end the regular subsidies by asking voters to “de-municipalize,” or remove the municipal sanction.

Mayor LaMantia wants to see the law changed, but his idea — to allow towns to negotiate with libraries to determine a fair amount of funding every year — will do little more than lead to the closing of libraries in smaller communities. The reality is that there is no such thing as negotiations in this case — it’s the town’s money so it will be up to the town’s governing body to provide as much or as little cash to the library as it wants.

The upshot, as I said, will not be good for libraries in the state — and could result in New Jersey follow the unfortunate lead of Massachusetts, where towns “are closing libraries or severely curtailing their hours because of budget cuts,” Jackson writes.

In Medway, which cut the library staff from 11 people to three and library hours from 40 a week to 20, Wendy Rowe, the chairwoman of that town’s library board of trustees, told the Globe in a feature story, “Libraries are the soul of the community. They’re community centers — not just books. And anybody can go to it.”

Libraries may be the soul of the community, but taxpayers have been willing to sell it, seeing them as less a priority than police or their own pocketbooks. Massachusetts is the state that claims the first lending library, seeded by a donation by Benjamin Franklin to the town of Franklin. The town originally asked Franklin to donate a bell. Saying he wished to spare the town the expense of a steeple for the bell, Franklin wrote that he hoped the town would accept books in the spirit of “sense being preferable to sound.”

The abandonment of libraries is part of a national picture where about half of public libraries in the United States had cuts or flat funding last year. This comes as their use has actually grown nationally. According to federal data in the 2007 “State of America’s Libraries” report by the American Library Association, library visits went up 61 percent from 1994 to 2004.

General circulation increased 28 percent in that time. The circulation of children’s materials went up 44 percent and participation in children’s programs increased 42 percent. Even though many people now go to libraries to use free Internet service, the top reason for visiting a library still remains reading or checking out a book, according to the ALA.

In a report this year for the Urban Libraries Council done by the Urban Institute and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, libraries are an unsung economic engine as a core of a community’s literacy and connection to technology and job opportunities. “Rather than succumbing to obsolescence with the advent of new information technologies,” the report said, “the basic business of public libraries is being recast. . . Public libraries are positioned to fuel not only new, but next economies.”

But they have to stay open and they have to be given the kind of public money necessary to keep their book collections and technology current.

Closing the Jamesburg library — or cutting off its municipal revenue — may offer some temporary budget and tax relief, but it will make Jamesburg poorer in the long run.

Keep it open.

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