If you want to know why the controlling Bancroft family should approve the sale of Dow Jones & Co. to Rupert Murdoch for $5 billion, just read Crawford Hill’s long letter to his relatives late last week.
In it, the grandson of family matriarch Jessie Bancroft Cox, says the family should take the money and run, […]

All the world’s a blog and we’re just merely bloggers.
You’d get that impression from the note Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis attached to the end of his odd blog post recently declaring “Facebook Bankruptcy.”
Calacanis wrote: “I’m not going to turn comments on…. so stop asking. If this is such an important post for your to comment […]

J.K. Rowling’s final installment in her Harry Potter series is the fastest selling book in history.
In its first 24 hours, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million copies in the U.S. and 2.7 million copies in the U.K.
At standard author hardcover royalty rates, that means Rowling earned roughly $50 million in one day. […]

As the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt wants wireless phone buyers to have unlimited choice in the software they use and the carriers they choose. In other words, a completely open system.
“When Americans can use the software and handsets of their choice, over open and competitive networks, they win,” Schmidt wrote in a letter to […]

Louis Uchitelle’s story in The New York Times about America’s new gilded age doesn’t come out swinging, like a Barlett & Steele investigation. But, ultimately, it could have just as much impact.
The timing is perfect.
As some in Congress question favored taxation rules for buyout kings, and even some corporate executives criticize mammoth pay packages of […]

July 13, 2007 — Drinking with reporters often makes for interesting copy. And Google’s Eric Schmidt didn’t disappoint when he closed down a hotel bar with a few members of the media early today at the Allyn & Co. moguls meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Schmidt took a shot at Viacom, which has filed a $1 […]

Shareholders beware. After a chief executive buys an extremely large or expensive house, his company’s performance slides.
That’s a central finding from a study – “Where are the shareholders’ mansions?” — of nearly every top executive in the S&P 500 by Crocker Liu at Arizona State and David Yermack at NYU.
The researchers also found that when […]

The New York Times editorial calling for the U.S. to leave Iraq ASAP, generated comment in all the expected places Sunday and one place, perhaps, not so expected: venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog.
“I agree with the editorial,” Wilson wrote. “Bush would love to wait and hand off the mess to the next President, but that’s […]