Holtzbrinck throws in the towel at Dow Jones
In protest against the board of directors' approval of the sale of Dow Jones to Murdoch, German publisher Dieter Holtzbrinck resigned Thursday from the board, of which he had been a member since 2001.
Just one day after the board of the Dow Jones publishing house approved the sale of its own company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (see ), German publisher Dieter Holtzbrinck resigned from the board on Thursday, as reported in Werben und Verkaufen and Spiegel Online. In his letter, he said that a takeover by Murdoch would damage the journalistic quality of the "Wall Street Journal" in the long term, but the former publisher of Handelsblatt and Die Zeit also wrote that he could not prove that he was right in his concerns about Murdoch's News Corp. He could only point to the business practices of News Corp. in the past. "I don't think a 'special committee' can stop Murdoch from doing what he wants, operating in his own way." The special committee is supposed to oversee the journalistic quality of the Wall Street Journal and personnel issues. In a written response, the board accepted the resignation with regret.
