Bancrofts hit flat note

So, 27-year-old opera singer Natalie Bancroft is to join the News Corporation board to represent the Bancroft family, who are selling their controlling stake in Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch's company. The deal has raised eyebrows because (a) Ms Bancroft is a 27-year-old opera singer who apparently knows zip about the media and (b) the Bancroft family has been extraordinarily cack-handed in attempting to decide who to nominate for their allocated board seat. Nats, whom the New Mexico Spencer Theatre for the Performing Arts billed as a "radiant mezzo-soprano" when she performed with New Mexico's favourite piano man Doug Montgomery, even wrote to other family members saying that it might seem "far-fetched" but she had the "capacity to handle" an appointment to the News Corp board, where she will rub shoulders with José MarÌa Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, Rod Eddington, former British Airways boss and Andrew Knight, former Telegraph chief executive. And as for the Bancrofts behaving like a confederacy of dunces, look no further than family member Crawford Hill's comment: "This entire, sad and pathetic final episode is a fiasco. No wonder we lost Dow Jones!!"