Ron Burkle may bid for Dow Jones in partnership with Yahoo! Uh, sure! [Fortune]

The Guardian says that shareholders are unlikely to get behind consumer publisher and Financial Times owner Pearson's attempt to block Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones, since the company "has debts of over £1bn and has made a number of large purchases in the educational publishing sector over recent years." Financial Times staffers are also unhappy, WSJwith good reason: "The easiest way to meet the cost-savings goals would be for the newspapers to cut their biggest expense—journalists." But is Rupert showing the strain of all this wheeling and dealing and potential sabotage?

General Electric is in talks with Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times to present an opposing bid to News Corp.'s offer for Dow Jones. The attempt to thwart Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal may involve "the Bancroft family retaining a 20 per cent stake in Dow Jones, with the remainder held by Pearson and GE, thus continuing the family's involvement with a company the family has controlled for more than a century." While the bid seems unlikely (Murdoch's $5 billion offer is more than a third of Pearson's total market capitalization), it makes strategic sense: G.E. owns CNBC, which will face a strong challenge from News Corp.'s imminent Fox News Channel, and a resurgent WSJ can only hurt the FT.

"The family that controls Dow Jones & Company has rejected a proposed plan prepared by its lawyers, asking them instead to seek stronger guarantees of editorial independence as a condition of selling the company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation." [NYT]

The Bancroft family will send its proposal for a board to preserve the Wall Street Journal's editorial independence to Rupert Murdoch as early as today. In the wake of yesterday's organizational realignment by new Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli—which sends Jim Cramer into paroxysms of fury—the paper announced it will raise its newsstand price to $1.50 an issue, which is less significant than it seems because no one actually buys the Wall Street Journal, they get it free at work. As the union representing Dow Jones employees flails about in its efforts to find an alternate bidder to Murdoch, the Guardian's Roy Greenslade defends the News Corp. head: "He knows how to run papers."

If Rupert Murdoch agrees to the Bancroft family's plans for editorial independence at Dow Jones, the family will tell the board to begin negotiations. Then, a year down the road when Murdoch breaks his promise and remakes the Wall Street Journal, the Bancrofts can say, "Hey, at least we tried," from the decks of their yachts. Everyone wins! Meanwhile, back at the Journal, new Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli is busy rearranging the deck chairs—including stripping a few "rising stars" of their titles. If anyone understands the agenda behind it all, get in touch with us, because we don't get it. In any event—don't get too comfortable, anyone!

Meet Robert Thomson, Rupert Murdoch's "go-to man" and the potential publisher of The Wall Street Journal should the Bancrofts accept Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones (which, say the Bancrofts, is contingent upon his accepting their proposals for a special board to safeguard editorial independence). [WSJ]

All promises aside, says a Financial Times columnist, Murdoch has never "created even one serious, authoritative and truly independent newspaper." [Guardian]

They couldn't get it together, leaving Rupert Murdoch's offer the only bid on the table for now. [WSJ]

Dow Jones board amends its severance packages "so that 160 senior managers could take sizable severance payments with them if they were forced out after a sale." Observers see it as a sign that the board is ready to sell. [NYT]

Media analyst doesn't think the editorial voice of the Wall Street Journal could be any more loopily right wing than it is now. [Guardian]

Mrs. Tina Brown gets a firm drubbing in the transcript released of Rupert Murdoch with two Wall Street Journal reporters. Harry Evans was the editor of the London Times a million years ago. Rupert says:

News of the World, the Sunday paper most likely to be sued by a celebrity and with England's biggest circ, and the London Times, the former home of Harry Evans, have cut 50 editorial positions. If these News International company papers are among Rupert Murdoch's more successful holdings (the Times less so), and overall they're going to cut 60 million bucks out of the annual budget, it must be grim for his least. Why would he allow this now, when he's still wooing the Bancroft family for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal and trying to squeeze on his most lovable mogul mask?

Here's some free advice: Your alternative is to find another job. You might want to save some of that dues money for the eventual grievance procedures you'll be fighting under a Murdoch-owned Journal. [Romenesko]

There's something about Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones that makes it irresistible for columnists and media observers to engage in tortured literary analogies. On Friday, HuffPo's Jason Linkins compared the news that the Bancroft family would meet with the man who was bidding for their property to a Tennessee Williams play; this morning, David Carr sees it as something out of a Jane Austen novel. (It's kind of understandable: Recall that on the day the offer was announced, the New York Observer saw the deal as Dickens' Marley, dead to start with.) Still, we think there's a more apt analogy that everyone's missing: This story is pretty much exactly what Public Enemy described in "You're Gonna Get Yours," the lead cut from their 1987 major-label debut, Yo! Bum Rush The Show.

"He'll say anything to buy something." [NYO]

"Wall Street Journal staff apparently have been told not to appear on CNBC today. That's how [Times business reporter] Andrew Sorkin ended up on the show at 8 o'clock—and why there is barely any Murdoch coverage even though it's a huge, huge story."

The Bancroft family, which holds the controlling interest in Dow Jones, has decided to meet with their hungry suitor, News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch. The family (or "The Family," as they put it; very Godfather) issued a statement that says that over some metaphorical linguine, they've perhaps come to find the offer attractive.

Dow Jones shares rose four percent on news that the Bancroft family was meeting to discuss Rupert Murdoch's offer for the company, but comments from one member of the clan (who is also on the board) may cause concern. The Wall Street Journal reports that Christopher Bancroft—who did not attend the meeting—feels that Murdoch would compromise the paper's independence. ""Why would I risk that? I'm open to any situation that benefits The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones and its shareholders. At the moment, I don't see anything that would do that." The Journal sees this as a sign that the deal might not go through:

"Tuesday," reports the Wall Street Journal, "Richard F. Zannino, the chief executive of Dow Jones, sent a note to employees saying the intense coverage of the News Corp. offer 'is finally showing signs of abating as there have been no significant new developments in recent days.'" That came, of course, in the wake of a couple of analysts' suggestion that Murdoch was going to walk away from his bid for the company. Whether or not you believe the prediction is at all credible, it did manage to briefly drive down Dow Jones' stock price, although shares rose again yesterday. The Journal also notes that the Bancroft family will meet in private today to discuss their options: "Some members of the clan believe the family should explore the matter further and look into possible alternatives to Mr. Murdoch's offer." Hopefully, they haven't heard about Murdoch's planned "multimillion-pound budget cuts... expected across News International's four titles after a fall in profits," which have already seen senior staffers departing those papers.