For US$5 billion, conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch is now the owner of the Wall Street Journal.

Here's the news story.

Here's a snippet of NYT media reporter Richard Siklos's take on what it means:

“There’s a very low probability that there’s a grand plan,” said one person close to Mr. Murdoch.

But based on his history, there is little doubt that Mr. Murdoch will directly aim at luring both readers and advertising away from The New York Times and The Financial Times, The Journal’s closest rivals. His strategy will probably include aggressively undercutting advertising and investing heavily in editorial content — particularly in Washington and international news — absorbing losses at first to win the longer-term war.

At its most ambitious, Mr. Murdoch’s vision for Dow Jones would establish The Journal as the rival to The Times in setting the daily news agenda of the country.

The vision has a business corollary: by broadening The Journal’s influence beyond pure business readers, Mr. Murdoch wants to reposition it as not just the world’s leading financial newspaper, but the world’s leading business journalism source for consumers.