Rupert Murdoch has sealed a deal to buy Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion, ending a century of family ownership and adding a crown jewel to his global media empire, News Corp.

The companies said early Wednesday morning that they signed a definitive agreement after the deal won sufficient support to pass from a deeply divided Bancroft family, which has controlled the storied newspaper publisher for generations.

Murdoch is getting one of the great trophies of U.S. journalism and a newspaper that is considered required reading among the business and power elite.

The deal will also expand Murdoch’s already massive global media and entertainment empire News Corp., which owns the Fox broadcast network, Fox News Channel, the Twentieth Century Fox movie and TV studio, the social networking site MySpace, newspapers in Australia and the U.K., and several satellite TV broadcasters. (MORE)