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News And Corporate Governance: What Dow Jones And Reuters Teach Us About Stewardship, Donald Nordberg

Donald Nordberg

This paper in an early draft of an article that appeared in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism in 2007. The outcomes of near simultaneous bids for the news organizations Reuters Group plc and Dow Jones & Co. Inc. in 2007 hinged on mechanisms of corporate governance put in place at each company to protect the integrity and independence of the editorial operations. Neither company is a particularly model of good governance, since the restrictions – super-voting shares at DJ, veto-power by the trustees of the Founders Share Company at Reuters – almost completely rule out an open market for corporate …