From the lefty Editor & Publisher, we learn of Rupert Murdoch’s early moves to destroy Dow Jones and turn the Wall Street Journal into the New York Post:

First, they’re selling their local papers.

Murdoch says the company also expects to save approximately $50 million by trimming some corporate functions at Dow Jones. When asked if other cuts across Dow Jones was in the pipeline, Murdoch said, “We are going to be in a hiring mode almost immediately.”

News Corp. plans to invest and expand Dow Jones across Europe and Asia in addition to more coverage of national and international general news to compete with The New York Times.

“One of the big reasons we are excited” about the Dow Jones acquisition “is the immediate lift it will give our entire company as we continue our digital transition,” Murdoch said.

News Corp. and Dow Jones executives are looking carefully whether to drop the subscription fee associated with access to some WSJ.com material. Murdoch said that in the short term it will be expensive to lose that revenue but in the long term it “may be a wonderful thing to do, we are looking at it closely.”

Destruction, I tell you snarkily!

And there are no plans to renegotiate or buyout the WSJ deal with CNBC, even though News Corp is launching the Fox Business Channel this fall. The thinking could be that the deal will end early when GE and Vivendi conclude that they no longer want to be chained to the corpse which is MSNBC. When MSNBC goes, logic dictates, CNBC follows.