An Uncompromising (Promotional) Stand

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One of the concerns about the purchase of Dow Jones by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was that the media tycoon might water down of the Wall Street Journal’s highly respected China coverage. The Murdoch era at the paper has just begun, so it’s too early to make any judgment about whether that’s happening.

Over on the promotion side of things though, the new Murdoch Journal looks to be uncompromising. According to Richard Siklos of Fortune (TIME’s sister publication), Dow Jones is planning a big print advertising campaign, and two of the outlets that had been approached to run the ads–the Financial Times and the China Daily–apparently sought to have the language toned down. The ads were to have read, “Today the greatest brand in financial journalism joins up with the world’s most restless global media company” and include the headline, “Free People, Free Markets, Free Thinking.” The papers had some different objections–only the state-run China Daily objected to the use of the word “free,” Siklos writes. Murdoch apparently declined to make any changes.