Vantiy Fair’s Michael Wolff writes about the News Corp./Dow Jones saga (Note to Vanity Fair: Really bad Photoshop job guys)…

At News Corp., no one, to say the least, opposes Rupert. As a C.E.O. he’s an entirely sui generis figure—not a replaceable manager, not even an iconic entrepreneur, but more like a giver of life. For most of News Corp.’s history, Murdoch himself was the only power—the company was his instrument. And yet, quite naturally, as Murdoch grows older, and the company ever larger, it has become a more ordinary corporate enterprise. And, within it, it was suddenly possible to detect if not objections then questions about what in bloody hell Rupert was doing. What was the point—inviting all this bad press, this negativity and opprobrium? Why risk it? And for a declining business—and to pay almost twice the market value for a declining business? Was this really the best use of News Corp.’s time and capital?

Peter Chernin, the company’s president and C.O.O., a larger and larger figure within the company (and not, as a Murdoch insider recently explained to me, necessarily “a believer” in all things Murdoch), stayed remote from the deal, in fact was concerned primarily with a much larger transaction—a potential deal with Yahoo involving MySpace, which News Corp. owns, for as much as $10 billion. Nor was Roger Ailes, the powerful executive who runs Fox News, and who will direct the new cable business channel for which, presumably, Murdoch was buying the Journal, much involved. Even James Murdoch, Rupert’s 34-year-old son, who runs SkyTV in the U.K. (in this dynasty-fixated family, his brother, Lachlan, 36, and sister, Elisabeth, 39, while still deeply engaged in family business matters, had themselves both quit their jobs in their father’s company—to his chagrin), was getting a little testy about all the bad press.