The Economist Group, which owns Roll Call, just bought Congressional Quarterly. CQ was formerly owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute. The Economist Group is controlled by a trust including one Rothschild. Pearson PLC (owners of the Financial Times Group), owns a 50% non-voting stake.

Rupert Murdoch's secret, sneaky plan to destroy Long Island tabloid Newsday: let a dysfunctional company buy it for more money. Cablevision purchased the paper for $650 million and Murdoch withdrew his bid this weekend. Now, everyone is a bit confused. Because Cablevision owns many odd things, but none of them have been newspapers up til now. "The Newsday bid had the backing of both Charles Dolan, who founded the company, and his son James L. Dolan, the chief executive," the Times reports, even though generally the Dolans hate each other and disagree about everything. And according to witnesses of the meetings between the Dolans and former Newsday owner Sam Zell, the "tension between the two has been obvious." As have the tensions between Cablevision and its shareholders. Because Cablevision is a company that does one thing quite well and everything else quite poorly.

Mars bought the WM. Wrigley Jr. Company. You gotta imagine a business desk reporter's dream is to one day use the phrase "the chewing gum concern" within the first paragraph of a front-page item. Congrats, Andrew Ross Sorkin! Livin' the dream! That candy industry ought to ride out the depression just fine, right? Gum will be an especially important part of our recession diet at any rate. [NYT]