After all the wheeling and dealing by Rupert Murdoch and the Bancroft family, we now know officially Murdoch’s News Corp will be the new owners of Dow Jones, which is also the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.

There are two sources for this information. The first is The Wall Street Journal (Subscription may be required.) and the second is Fox News.

This quote is from Fox:

NEW YORK — Dow Jones & Co. (DJ) has entered into a definitive agreement to be purchased by News Corp. (NWS), the companies confirmed Wednesday.

After weeks of negotiations, members of the Bancroft family, which represent 37 percent of the voting shares of Dow Jones (more than half of their 64 percent held), agreed to back the deal. The companies valued Dow Jones at $5.6 billion — or $60 a share — but it is unclear if that number includes assumption of debt. Another 29 percent of Dow Jones shares are publicly floated, and most analysts expect the overwhelming majority of those shares to be voted in favor of a deal.

“It is our most fervent hope that in the years to come, The Wall Street Journal will continue to enjoy, and deserve, the universal admiration and respect in which it is held all over the world,” a Bancroft family spokesperson said in a press release.

Under the terms of the deal, a member of the Bancroft family or another mutually acceptable person would be appointed to News Corp.’s board of directors.

The deal marks the end of what had been nearly four months of wrangling, infighting and controversy since News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch first broached the idea of acquiring Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, SmartMoney, MarketWatch and Barron’s. Murdoch suggested a deal in March during a meeting with Dow Jones Chief Executive Rich Zannino and made a formal offer to the board in April.

This is part of the statement in The Wall Street Journal:

A century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones & Co. is over.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. sealed a $5 billion agreement to purchase the publisher of The Wall Street Journal after three months of drama in the controlling family and public debate about journalistic values.

One of the oldest and best-known franchises in the newspaper industry, beset in recent years by business pressures, now enters a new era as part of a world-wide media conglomerate. The 76-year-old Mr. Murdoch, whose properties range from the Fox television network to the Times of London, negotiated hard to win the paper he long coveted. He has promised to invest more in Dow Jones journalism.

The Bancrofts worried about protecting the reputation of the Journal, the nation’s second-largest newspaper. They feared Mr. Murdoch would meddle in the paper’s editorial affairs and import the brand of sensationalist journalism found in some of his properties such as the New York Post. Some Bancrofts sought other buyers.

But ultimately, Mr. Murdoch’s $60-a-share bid — a 67% premium above Dow Jones’s share price when it became public — was the only serious offer on the table. Key family members, spurred by Dow Jones’s board and advisers, decided they had no choice.

“On the one hand it is quite sad, but on the other it was the only reasonable thing to do,” said Elisabeth Goth Chelberg, a Bancroft family member who unsuccessfully tried a decade ago to get the family more involved in management. “Now I look forward to a better Dow Jones. It’s going to have more money and a world presence and all of the things that it could have and should have had but didn’t.”

Opponents of the deal called it a dark day for journalism. Leslie Hill, a family member who opposed the deal, resigned as a Dow Jones director late Tuesday afternoon. In a letter to the board, she conceded the deal was a good one in financial terms, but said it failed to outweigh “the loss of an independent global news organization with unmatched credibility and integrity.”

In an increasingly pinched landscape for newspaper companies, the alternative to selling was a future fraught with risk — in particular, that deep cost cuts would be needed to prop up the stock price and make up for dwindling advertising.

I don’t have any feelings one way or the other about the acquisition as long as my subscription price doesn’t go up too high.

I expect the quality of the newspaper to stay the same, but we’re talking about the Dow Jones here too, and not just the Journal.