Fords and Bancrofts: A Matched Pair

Should the Bancrofts pay attention to the Fords? This morning, there are reports that the Ford family is debating selling some of their stake in Ford, in part because family members feel that Ford (F - commentary - Cramer's Take) has been handicapped by them.

For me, I wonder if the Bancroft family has done the same to Dow Jones (DJ - commentary - Cramer's Take).

When you consider the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have more than doubled during a 10-year period where Dow Jones has done nothing, you have to wonder whether the family has insulated Dow Jones from getting, well, better.

When you consider the other information providers, most notably the private Bloomberg and the public McGraw-Hill (MHP - commentary - Cramer's Take), you see the potential for what could have been.

After all, Dow Jones used to be a provider of precisely the kind of data that Bloomberg profited from and precisely the kind of indices and financial news that McGraw-Hill provides -- lucrative stuff. It had its own television network for business, something that we know is extremely profitable for CNBC and GE (GE - commentary - Cramer's Take). No one kept Dow Jones, always mentioned as the preeminent producer of financial data, from moving or dominating in these areas -- except management, which was, alas, insulated by the Bancrofts. The company has moved aggressively into online, but it is gated, which holds back the most lucrative form of online business, ads, and it takes away from the far more profitable print edition.

Now it has moved into Factiva in a big way. But I wonder if, a year from now, that will be viewed as bad, too. If you want something about a company or a businessperson, if you want anything historical, just go to Google (GOOG - commentary - Cramer's Take). It has it much faster. For example, I was looking into the chicanery behind the poor numbers of a certain pharmaceutical company this weekend, and at first I went to the expensive Factiva, but it kept coming up with no stories. A quick trip to Google produced everything I need. Google's free. I see write-offs coming from Factiva in three or four years.

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