would do well to look to the Chandlers, the family that owned the LA Times since General Harrison Gray Otis bought a quarter share in 1882. They were once the most powerful clan in the city; now there are nearly 200 descendants and none has been near the publisher's office since 1980 when the late Otis Chandler (right) - a notable car collector and a hunter once trampled by an ox in the Arctic - stepped down.

In 2000, they sold their majority holding for $8.3bn and recently they finally disposed of a remaining stake to developer Sam Zell. As a result, W magazine noted that despite being LA blue-bloods, the Chandlers are now notable only as a family of non-entities. "As dull as a dashboard," said one relative by marriage. "And no motivation to work, because there's the trust."

One alternative to selling up is to endure a great deal of abuse. Last

As one elder Bancroft puts it: ‘Without the Wall Street Journal we’re just another
rich family’

week, shareholders in the New York Times withheld 42 per cent of their votes for directors, a rebuke to the paper's management by the Sulzberger family. The family weakly concluded that the revolt was milder than they were expecting and vowed to fight on, saying the dual-class stock structure, that affords them, the Bancrofts and the Grahams, control over their respective companies was designed precisely for vexing times like these.

The Bancrofts rarely break cover. But in 1997, the first sign of a crack in the family veneer came when two members, Lizzie Goth and Billy Cox III, complained publicly about Dow Jones' lagging stock price. Following this week's Murdoch bid, another family member, champion powerboat racer Jeff Stevenson, told an interviewer that he hasn't "talked to anyone about what's going on. I'm not really that involved". Which is just what Rupert is banking on.