In locking up Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion late Tuesday, Rupert Murdoch ensured that his vast influence would be felt in the business world for years to come—as it is now by hundreds of millions of global TV viewers, moviegoers and Internet users.

News Corp.’s purchase of the parent of the Wall Street Journal puts Murdoch, its chairman, within reach of fulfilling a years-long personal ambition: leveraging the most trusted name in business news into the premier TV, print and online provider of financial information across the globe.

Murdoch claimed his prize after respective board meetings of News Corp. and Dow Jones directors late Tuesday. In recent days, Murdoch swayed enough members of the Bancroft family, which has 64 percent of the voting power, to cede ownership of a company they have controlled since 1928.

Murdoch intends to use the Journal brand, its stories and its editorial talent in new ways, most urgently to fill a new cable channel he is launching this fall to rival CNBC. He promises to beef up the Journal’s editions in Asia and Europe. He wants the Journal to cover more general and political news, positioning it as a head-to-head rival of the nationally circulated New York Times. He also plans to expand the Journal’s money-earning web site.

Already, teenagers are among the 115 million global Myspace.com users whom Murdoch counts as his customers. So are the tens of millions of moviegoers worldwide who watched The Simpsons Movie in cinemas last weekend, the more than 30 million viewers who tuned in for the American Idol finale on the Fox network and some 300 million StarTV viewers in Asia. His empire has secured the rights to sporting events worldwide, using such properties as the NFL in the US and soccer overseas to garner audiences and popularize his TV channels.

“He owns more than 100 newspapers, an international empire in television, print and the Internet,” Boston University journalism expert Louis Ureneck said. “He’s everywhere.”

Veteran newspaper analyst John Morton called Murdoch a modern equivalent of William Randolph Hearst because of the extent to which News Corp. carries the 76-year-old billionaire’s imprint, just as the late California newspaper baron once did. “Seldom do you see a businessman so closely identified with his empire,” Morton said.

For those who disdain the native Australian’s conservative politics, and for journalists who fear his potential meddling in editorial decisions, the news that Murdoch had finally completed the deal after nearly three months of public wrangling was greeted with resignation and dismay.

Recently, Murdoch has suggested that Journal stories should be shorter and less esoteric. In scores of letters to the Bancrofts, reporters portrayed Murdoch as someone with a history of selecting editors who would use their power to help advance Murdoch’s corporate interests.

“Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal are just feathers in Murdoch’s cap—but signal a disturbing trend for consumers who rely on media to be independent and diverse sources for news and information,” Consumer Union’s Gene Kimmelman said in a statement Tuesday.

Officials from the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, which represents Journal employees, also expressed disappointment.

But Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research in Boston said he doesn’t expect Murdoch to meddle with the Journal’s news operations because its reputation is its most valuable asset. “You don’t buy a Bentley and then go off-roading with it,” he said.

From the start, Murdoch’s checkbook and patience gave him the advantage. His pursuit started informally earlier in the year when he got wind that the Bancrofts might be willing to sell for $60 a share, a price not seen in more than five years.

The News Corp. chairman asked Dow Jones chief executive Richard Zannino to breakfast in March. His first approach was rebuffed, but the margin of resistance grew smaller after Murdoch’s proposed terms leaked and the stock soared. Murdoch then met with the Bancrofts and agreed in writing not to fire the Journal’s top editors without the approval of an independent board.

By bidding 65 percent above the value of the Dow Jones stock, Murdoch all but eliminated any serious rivals and also made it virtually impossible for the Bancrofts to pass up his offer. And, despite suggesting at times he was frustrated and might walk away, it seemed clear Murdoch wasn’t going anywhere.

Dow Jones enjoys a rich history dating back to 1882, when it was founded by three journalists. The Wall Street Journal appeared in 1889, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index debuting seven years later. In 1928 Hugh Bancroft, whose family controls the company, became president.

When everything was going well, Dow Jones ranked among the country’s most admired companies and the Bancrofts were toasted for their hands-off posture. The Journal consistently produced one of the world’s great newspapers.

But in recent years, as the company stumbled and the newspaper advertising market weakened, members of the Bancroft family began to wonder if they had ceded too much control to their professional managers.

At the same time as Dow Jones shares sagged and some family members grew restless, Murdoch was plotting to challenge General Electric Co.’s CNBC business news channel. In February he formally unveiled his plans.

Murdoch aims to use the Journal to build that new channel. Ownership of the second-largest US paper by circulation, after USA Today, will give Murdoch an immense supply of stories and data about businesses, a profitable and still-growing part of a broader journalism world that has been shaken by the explosion in free, advertising-supported news web sites.

Murdoch likes the Journal’s business news because people are willing to pay for it online in a way they won’t pony up for news about City Hall, celebrities or bus crashes. Bernoff of Forrester Research called the Journal “sort of a hat trick”: a mass audience that generates online subscription fees with advertising its readers don’t mind.

Still, Murdoch isn’t about building niche businesses. Rather, his pattern is to exploit assets in fresh ways for his company, which includes such newspapers as the New York Post, a collection of web sites such as MySpace, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Fox network and the Fox News channel.

“He’ll no doubt project Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal into other parts of his company in ways that we haven’t thought of yet,” Morton said.

Many of Murdoch’s own executives were skeptical of his pursuit of Dow Jones, believing it was an expensive bet on old media at a time when new media is taking off. Newspapers are out of favor, with advertising and readership migrating to the Internet. Analyst Laura Martin of Soleil—Media Metrics said that Wall Street will watch closely to see how he justifies the price.

“The reason this is a big deal is that people are wondering whether Rupert sees something we are all missing from the upside of newspapers,” Martin said.

Murdoch is counting on growing demand for financial news worldwide as the economies of China, India, Russia and Latin America become stronger. There are few sources of reliable news and analysis in these emerging markets, where News Corp. already has made inroads. For instance, Murdoch was plotting entry into China before most other media companies. He was early in spotting India’s growing middle class and staking out TV channels there.

Since inheriting a small Australian newspaper business from his father more than 50 years ago, Murdoch has relished trampling on conventional wisdom. He built his global media empire in large part through deals that experts considered too risky, too expensive or both.

Few thought there was room for a fourth TV network in the 1980s when his Fox network took on ABC, CBS and NBC. Similar skepticism greeted the Fox News cable-TV channel when it challenged CNN, and his 2005 decision to pay $580 million for MySpace.com. Murdoch has had some big misses, such as the ill-fated acquisition of Hollywood-based Gemstar TV Guide International.

Nonetheless, his hits have been big enough to give skeptics pause when he took his $5-billion swing at Dow Jones. Today his personal net worth is estimated at $7.7 billion by Forbes.

Andrew Leckey, director of the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University, said that Murdoch’s strength is his ability to look at properties dispassionately, then figure out where they fit into his vision, something he expects him to do at Dow Jones.

“It was worth far more to him than it would be to others because he can do more with it,” Leckey said.

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