Dow Jones costs News Corp $2.8 bln in writedown

NEW YORK Feb 6 (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (NWSA.O) wrote down half the value of Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones & Co, which it bought for $5.6 billion in 2007, according to a U.S. regulatory filing on Friday.

The $2.8 billion writedown was part of an $8.4 billion writedown that News Corp announced on Thursday for its broadcast and newspaper properties.

The international media conglomerate paid $60 per share for Dow Jones, 65 percent higher than its market value at the time. Besides the Journal, Dow Jones also owns Dow Jones Newswires, the weekly Barron's, the Factiva online news archive, and the business news website MarketWatch.com.

Some analysts and media watchers have criticized the breathtaking premium, saying that had Murdoch waited longer for financial markets to deteriorate and advertising revenue to weaken, he could have had Dow Jones for less money.

When News Corp published its fiscal 2009 second-quarter results on Thursday, it included in its $8.4 billion writedown $3.6 billion in goodwill [ID:nN05316306]. Of that, $2.8 billion was related to Dow Jones, News Corp said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A further $185 million included in the writedown was for the New York Post, said a source familiar with the matter but not authorized to talk about the filing. Murdoch has long maintained the racy and popular tabloid despite its history of losing money. (Reporting by Robert MacMillan; editing by John Wallace)