Alan Meckler -- whose Jupiter Media merged with Mediabistro, the parent company of this blog -- gives his thoughts on That Folk Hero of silicon Valley. From our colleague Chris Ariens of TVNewser, who is presently liveblogging at The Future of Business Media Conference:

''Alan Meckler ... said the Dow Jones deal could have been done a year ago. Last year, on his blog, Meckler wrote that Yahoo! should have taken the leap and made an offer for Dow Jones. 'Now,' Meckler says 'who's going to beat Rupert Murdoch with his assets: print, online, TV.''

In January 2006, Meckler blogged:

''Yahoo's strength is as a media company. It also has significant strength in the financial space. Therefore if I was running Yahoo I would make a full court press to remain the number one financial organziation on the Web. And I would do that by attempting to buy Dow Jones.

''Presuming one could entice Dow Jones to sell to Yahoo is presuming quite a lot. Regardless, such a move would separate Yahoo from being compared to Google and would make Yahoo a true media company powerhouse.''

It was not to be.