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Rupert Murdoch is set to achieve his dream of running the Wall Street Journal after agreeing a £2.76 billion deal to buy its publishers.

The media mogul's News Corp, whose newspapers include the Times and the Sun, will buy the company after agreeing the takeover with Dow Jones's controlling Bancroft family.

Mr Murdoch said he would be "an equally strong custodian" of the business, which will join Fox News, the Twentieth Century Fox film and television studios, and social networking website MySpace in the News Corp stable.

The Bancroft family had been deeply divided over whether to sell to Mr Murdoch, largely over concerns that his hands-on management style could affect the papers' coverage.

The family had a deadline of Monday to tell the lead trustee how they would vote. The Wall Street Journal said an arrangement where Dow Jones may pay $30 million (£15 million) in deal-related costs could have swayed some family members.

The Bancrofts collectively controlled 64 per cent of the shareholder vote of Dow Jones through a special class of stock, but only about half of them needed to support the deal for it to succeed.

According to the Journal, Bancroft family members owning 32 per cent of Dow Jones & Co's overall votes agreed to support Mr Murdoch's bid.

Outside the Dow Jones building in lower Manhattan, New York, Thomas Walker, who worked on the global copy desk at The Wall Street Journal, said he was quitting rather than see the paper sold to Mr Murdoch.

"I don't want to work for the man," he said.

© Independent Television News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.