By Jerry Ceppos

Rupert Murdoch and his brash takeover attempt of Dow Jones scare me because he reminds me of a past that I thought we had buried.

Here’s why Murdoch reminds me more of William Randolph Hearst than of Arthur Sulzberger (Junior or Senior):

1. Murdoch, like most of the press barons of old, is known for meddling with headlines and other daily details at some of his papers.

2. Murdoch, like Hearst and others, is the living symbol of his company.

3. Like the others, Murdoch has some good ideas, including his strong interest in the Internet. (To be honest, I wasn’t as dazzled as some editors were with his commitment to the Internet during a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors a few years ago. I thought Murdoch said what we all should have known: The Internet will eat our lunch if we don’t get busy. On the other hand, his gutsy purchase of MySpace shortly afterwards put his money where his mouth was.)

4. Like Hearst and the others, Murdoch loves sensationalism.

5. Murdoch, like the others, breaks down the barrier between news and opinion. I don’t care if Murdoch is the larger-than-life symbol of his company, but that does make me worry about his ego. I may not even care if the big boss meddles with headlines as long as he writes good ones that fit. And I’m delighted with his interest in the Internet.

But I do care about sensationalism and mixing news and editorial – enough to say that selling Dow Jones to Murdoch could be one of American journalism’s biggest disasters in many decades.

A sale to Murdoch would be especially ironic at a time when the Journal has gotten better and better. It is probably our best-edited paper. It matches anyone on investigations, but deserves extra credit for choosing some of the most difficult topics, such as backdating of stock options. It has decided more emphatically than almost any other paper to look ahead in its print news report rather than to regurgitate day-old “news.” Its unrelenting editorial page does more reporting than most newsrooms do. And, of course, its commitment to the Internet is second to none.

This is a class operation that deserves a class owner, not a press baron who would have fit in better 100 years ago.