Today’s New York Times contains yet the latest piece of speculation on Rupert Murdoch’s offer to buy Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. This story, by Times staffer Richard Siklos, includes actual reporting (including at least one sit-down with RM himself) and declares that Murdoch’s interests are digital even as he makes a play for a piece of old media.

The NY media world has been abuzz since Murdoch made his offer almost a month ago, with opinions falling into two general camps: that which says he will destroy the venerable old WSJ with his meddling and tabloid tendencies, and that which says he will leave well enough alone and that, perhaps, the Journal could use a good swift kick in the pants. (Both camps agree he would probably leave the arch conservative Op-Ed pages alone, since the views expressed within so closely mirror his own: pro-war, anti-regulation and occasionally downright hysterical.)

While there is much more context to be chewed on — the eternal Aussie outsider’s need to buy respectability, his nascent news networks need for credibility — the question of his meddling if often settled by looking to the past: He didn’t muck with the Village Voice nor New York magazine when he owned them in the seventies, figuring if the publications made money, who was he to argue? (Though many Murdoch watchers also say you can read his mind by reading the New York Post — a frightening thought indeed.)

Like many who have worked in NY media for long, I too worked for Mudoch once. In the mid-nineties I was part of a team of writers, editors, producers and designers who labored on the stillborn web baby never to be known as iGuide. It was Murdoch’s first internet venture (in partnership with MCI), launched and folded in those heady days when no one had a business model that made any sense but lots of people were throwing money around. I was no different: my assistant had to show me what a website looked like (I think Word was the first one I saw) and I spent a good deal of my time trying to explain what we were doing to folks in old media.

That iGuide was doomed is apparent in hindsight but we were too busy building a ladder to the sky. Even then the question of Murdoch’s influence was on our minds — even though no one outside of our digital tent could see the content we were creating. Covering the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, which was being held in human-rights challenged Beijing in the summer of ’95, I was able to finagle a number of comments from interested outsiders such as Susan Faludi and Senator Ted Kennedy .

Kennedy’s quote, while bland and rather predictable, was my big get; though it’s doubtful he came anywhere near it, it represented creds to us. Look, Ted Kennedy on our site! We gave him pride of place, complete with a picture, on the front page of our special women’s conference coverage. So you can imagine my surprise when I came in and discovered that both the picture and Kennedy’s quote had been removed.

“Rupert hates Kennedy,” my boss, a jovial Brit named Jonathan Miller told me. When Murdoch came by the office to see what we were up to my superiors panicked, thinking that the mere sight of Ted’s flushed Irish face would send him into a fit. I can’t help but think they overreacted — we were, after all, gathering news — but iGuide didn’t last long enough for me to find out. After losing MCI as a partner, and $40M of his own money, Murdoch took decisive action. First, he came by the office to tell us there was nothing to worry about. Then, a few days later, he gave us all the sack.

Not that I have any bad feelings about the experience. I went on to several more internet jobs, most for companies that no longer exist. iGuide, of course, is gone — it’s almost as if it was never there — and so is Word and, for that matter, MCI. Only Rupert remains.