Murdoch looks to legacy with Dow Jones bid

By Kenneth Li

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch spent a lifetime building a global media empire, but is best known for tarting up tabloids with topless girls and screaming headlines from Sydney to London to New York.

Now the 76-year-old media mogul aims to redeem his legacy in the business he loves most with the anticipated $5 billion purchase of Dow Jones & Co. Inc., owner of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's financial weekly and Dow Jones Newswires.

Dow Jones looked set to agree on Tuesday to the buyout later on Tuesday, regarded as one of the most audacious yet for the consummate dealmaker.

Murdoch wants to position himself as the savior of the Journal, as newspapers languish in a downward spiral of circulation and advertising declines.

He has never lacked for ideas. "What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world?" Murdoch told Time magazine in a recent profile.

Here's another of Murdoch's musings on the future of the soon-to-be-his Wall Street Journal. "And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks," he said.

But Murdoch's worst enemy may be his reputation for meddling in the print business.

From a pair of inherited newspapers in Australia, he built the world's most far-flung and diverse empire of nearly 120 newspapers, film studios, television networks and Internet properties, stirring controversy with his brash, populist journalism, but always seizing the chance to expand.