Though the Wall Street Journal has a new sports page from News Corp. cousin Stats Inc., all those shrieks of Murdoch-ification of the prestigious financial paper have yet to be realized, reports Frank Ahrens in the Washington Post.

In fact, in meetings between marketing representatives of the Journal and News Corp., Murdoch’s company has turned down some Journal ideas for pairing the newspaper with News Corp. entities, according to a source close to the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private. The message from News Corp. to the Journal: We don’t want to cheapen your brand.

Ahrens should be issuing a correction tomorrow.

Blogs David Freedlander for amNY (via):

Today, downtown, by City Hall, we saw multiple sellers hawking a special newspaper combo meal of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post for the bargain basement price of $1.00.

For you economists out there, that’s basically like getting 30 percent off the Journal by agreeing to take the Post off their hands. Which, now that we think about, may have been how that whole Rupert and Bancroft deal went down in the first place.