Murdoch has been like a dog locked on to the throat of his prey since his first bid for Dow Jones in April. At that time, News Corp offered $60 per share to the Bancroft family (Dow Jones's controlling owners). He said he would not raise the price, and he was true to his word. The deal stands at $60 per share, nearly double where it closed on March 30, 2007 at $34.47. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (DJ) shares traded up this morning on the news reaching $58.16 in late morning trading. Shares of News Corporation (NWS) were down slightly at $22.65.

The deal brings one of the most respected news publishing organizations in the world into a newspaper family of tabloids that includes the New York Post in the US and The Sun in the UK. News Corp is a family of media properties that includes Filmed Entertainment; Television; Cable Network Programming; Direct Broadcast Satellite Television; Magazines and Inserts; Newspapers; Book Publishing.

While The Wall Street Journal is the premium business news offering, by paying $5.8 billion, Murdoch has either overpaid or believes that he can create value with business news online. From CNNMoney.com,

"You can turn old media into new media and make it very very profitable. That's why you see Murdoch offering to pay what appears to be a wild number for Dow Jones," said Richard Dorfman, a managing director with Richard Alan Inc., a financial advisory and investment company focusing on the media industry. "Maybe he's right. Maybe he's wrong. But clearly he's taking an old media asset and putting a new media multiple on it."

Or in Murdoch’s case, you can turn new media into gold. Murdoch and News Corp nabbed myspace.com in 2005 for $580 million on an impulse buy. Many scoffed at the price until a year later Fox Interactive (owned by Murdoch’s News Corp) announced that Google agreed to pay at least $900 million to be the search provider on MySpace. And as recently as a month ago, The Washington Post reported that Murdoch has been discussing a deal to swap his MySpace social-networking site with Yahoo! Inc (YHOO) for a one-quarter stake in the Internet-portal company.

In a time of disruption, it is always better to be the disrupter than the disrupted. At a spry 76 years old, Rupert Murdoch seems fit enough to deconstruct mainstream media.

Read more about Rupert Murdoch and his internet investments in a great article on Forbes.