War at the Wall Street Journal (16 page)

His kinetic presence called to mind a rambunctious child who was perpetually unable to sit still or settle down. He found humor in the frenzy of it all and enjoyed nothing more than the intellectual workout of being in the center of a newspaper in the midst of a newspaper crisis. He often mused aloud about his desire to move back to China, where he had been more of a free agent, unhindered by the day-today bureaucracy and monotony his current job entailed. And yet, at each juncture of his career, when presented with a choice that took him off the ambitious track, he chose the very well-traveled road and made fun of it all the way. Whatever his true thoughts, he was smart enough to crack a joke, write a headline, and get to his drinks meeting by six. He had spent the better part of the previous year and a half working on the redesign of the paper, which had allowed him plenty of time to network and engage in a project executives both inside and outside the
Journal
found fascinating. The redesign was, in fact, the main reason he had been such a scant presence in the newsroom.

That afternoon, however, he was sitting at his desk when his phone rang and the name of his colleague and friend money and investing editor Nikhil Deogun popped up in digital font on its small gray screen. Young and ambitious, the two were allies in their plans to shake up the paper. Both were riding high, along with the rest of the
Journal
newsroom, on the back of the two Pulitzer Prizes the paper had won the previous day. The paper had won an International prize for its series on the adverse effects of industrial development in China, and the Public Service award—the most prestigious of all Pulitzers—for its series on business executives who had rewarded themselves with millions of dollars by backdating stock options. The articles led to the federal investigation of more than 130 companies, and at least seventy top executives had lost their jobs. It was the
Journal
at its finest, and all the more meaningful because the paper had been able to hand Steiger the Public Service award just as he was about to retire. A perfect sendoff. Neither would be able to truly anticipate the earthquake that was about to hit them, of course. Brauchli picked up the phone and heard the conspiratorially low voice of Deogun on the other end.

"Can you meet me downstairs by the turnstiles?" Deogun asked. Deogun's tone was steady, much as it was when he was reporting any business deal. Once downstairs in the lobby of the World Financial Center, Deogun pulled Brauchli aside and said, "I just got a call from a source telling me that Murdoch has submitted a bid for Dow Jones." Deogun was in the process of moving from Washington, DC, where he had been a deputy in the
Journal
's Washington bureau, to New York, where he was taking over the paper's Money & Investing section. He didn't reveal his sources to Brauchli, but Deogun's connectedness had just put him in an uncomfortable position: he had first heard this news earlier in the day from a longtime source who had thought Deogun was still in DC. He told Deogun the news "off the record" and threatened him with legal language when he realized Deogun might actually report it. Deogun liked to be in the game, but he wasn't sure he wanted to be this deep in it. He had told the paper's exiting managing editor, Paul Steiger, but no one else. He was, very uncharacteristically, almost paralyzed by the tip he had just been handed.

Though Murdoch was well known in media circles to covet the
Journal,
an actual bid from him was a shock. Most reporters and editors at the
Journal
couldn't envision what the paper would be like without the Bancrofts; many of them, like Brauchli, had never really worked anywhere else. Brauchli took the news from Deogun calmly, the way one does when in denial of an imminently threatening event. He wasn't certain the offer was for real, or, more important, whether the Bancroft family would even entertain the idea of selling the company. Other offers had come in for the
Journal
in years past, but the paper remained independent, and its journalists remained buffered from the corporate takeover dramas they covered at other institutions with jaded eyes.

Reality set in later that afternoon, when Brauchli's phone rang again, this time with a call from Robert Thomson, the editor of Murdoch's
Times
of London. Thomson suffered from the painful chronic inflammatory joint disease ankylosing spondylitis, which constricted his chest to the point that his posture was perpetually stooped. A native of Australia like his boss, he was known in London for his dry wit, his quiet but winning demeanor, and his idiosyncratic fashions—he seemed perpetually clad in a skinny black suit and skinny black tie.

Brauchli was surprised that Thomson was in New York, but he confirmed the news. "Yes, they just sent it over," Thomson said, when Brauchli asked him about it. "That's why I'm in New York." Thomson's information was more specific than Deogun's—he told Brauchli of the $60 price tag—and he suggested grabbing a drink later. It was clear he had inside knowledge of the bid. Brauchli rushed off the call.

Thomson, who was born thirty years to the day after Murdoch, had become a kind of adopted son to the old man (though one of his own sons claimed it was with his editors that Murdoch had his most successful relationships; his children occasionally rose to the level of being adopted editors). Thomson had strong opinions about the paper. He remembered competing against it half a decade before when he was running the
Financial Times
s U.S. edition in New York. His team broke stories the
Journal
ignored but then followed days later without recognizing the
FT'
s scoop.

He thought the
Journal
's focus—long, front-page feature stories that often had very little to do with the day's news—bred complacency and indulgence. And he knew that just a year previously, in what he saw as the misguided retreat dubbed "
Journal
3.0," the paper was backing even further away from the news. The
Journal
was trying to go in another direction, to emphasize its strong suit and analyze the news in the pages of the paper, not just report it. The effort at analysis, Thomson would later note dismissively, meant starting most articles with the word
how
and filling the paper with clunky analysis. It was, to him, pretending the newspaper wasn't in the business of breaking news. He disapproved of the new approach and had spent years whispering into Murdoch's ear about how he could improve the paper. In 2001, after Thomson had taken over as U.S. editor of the
Financial Times,
he said that the
Journal
was best at covering "midsize companies doing middling deals in the Midwest," while the
FT
was designed for a more sophisticated reader. "It's a Lexus Taurus thing." He knew Brauchli from way back when they were both foreign correspondents in Asia, but he didn't like the direction his friend's paper was taking.

A day or two after the bid, Deogun received another call from Ginsberg, bearing the same news. Both Ginsberg and Thomson were calling on Rupert's behalf, gauging the reaction inside the
Journal
's newsroom in order to bring a scrap of information back to their boss and benefactor. Murdoch craved it.

Murdoch and Thomson vacationed together, and their wives, both Chinese and roughly the same age, got along well. Thomson shared Murdoch's Australian puckishness, and both men relished their ability to provoke. Both men were defined by a certain disdain for their backgrounds. Thomson, one of three boys, grew up the son of a typesetter in a small hamlet in Australia. He took a job as a copy boy at age seventeen at the
Herald
in Melbourne.

Thomson had met Murdoch in New York when the former was the U.S. editor of the
Financial Times.
Their bond was cemented when Thomson, in a move that both he and Murdoch saw as a slight from the posh Brits, was passed over to be the top editor of the
Financial Times.
Thomson was deeply wounded by the oversight, and Murdoch, sensing a countryman in distress, scooped Thomson up as his chosen editor for the
Times
of London. With time, the two grew even closer. Thomson's own father having been a complicated presence in his upbringing, Murdoch filled the role.

 

The same day, April 17, 2007, that Brauchli received the calls alerting him to News Corp.'s offer, he also fielded another call from
Journal
publisher Gordon Crovitz, bearing a different sort of news. Crovitz hadn't yet been notified of the bid (he wouldn't find out until almost two weeks later, when news of it broke on May 1). Brauchli didn't mention the Murdoch bid; he was treating it, for the moment, like an enormously sensitive news story that he wasn't going to spread around.

In Crovitz's mind, the day was significant for a different reason: Dow Jones was going to appoint a new managing editor of the
Journal,
the first such appointment in sixteen years. He had been dread
ing the day, because it meant he was going to officially have to betray his friend Paul Ingrassia.

After Ingrassia had spent almost a year on his "news strategy committee," his downfall had culminated in a meeting where he presented his committee's results to Zannino, Crovitz, and a few other executives. He, as planned, had proposed combining some of the
Journal
and Newswires bureaus and reported that the combinations would save between $5 million and $7 million in ongoing newsroom costs.

The combinations carried huge political costs for Crovitz and Zannino. If they followed Ingrassia's suggestion, they would finally be taking on what many in the
Journal
newsroom had dreaded for years. The moves would worsen morale and leave Zannino taking the blame for ruining the newsroom—all for a paltry business return. After Ingrassia presented his ideas—to get the Detroit bureau and the Washington bureaus of the
Journal
and Newswires to work together on all stories and plan coverage together—and the relatively small cost savings estimates, Zannino had blown up, visibly agitated at Ingrassia's suggestion and what, to Zannino, seemed like his tin ear.

The managing editor had to be the CEO's cover. If Zannino suggested something that would damage the
Journal,
he wanted someone like Paul Steiger in that role, who had the political skills to navigate the retrenchment without calling attention to it. Ingrassia was too blunt and too insensitive in his handling of the newsroom to be trusted in the spot. Zannino had upbraided Ingrassia in the meeting and stormed out. Ever since then, the choice for managing editor had seemed inevitable—it was Marcus Brauchli. But to be certain, Zannino and Crovitz had created spreadsheets and lists of desirable attributes an ideal managing editor would possess. They ranked both Brauchli and Ingrassia. Even by the spreadsheet, Brauchli won. Zannino was certain of this, but it took Crovitz longer to come to agree with his boss. Crovitz and Ingrassia had known each other for a long time, through Ingrassia's bout with lung cancer and years in the newsroom, though always on opposite sides of the Chinese wall between the news and editorial pages. Besides, he had virtually promised him the managing editor job; backtracking was going to be painful and embarrassing.

Unlike the "news strategy committee," Brauchli's chosen project fared well. He had been the news man behind the "
Journal
3.0" redesign. The project achieved the aforementioned shrinking of the paper and the placement of an advertisement on its front page. Brauchli and Crovitz had worked together on launching it. Crovitz had written in his publisher's note the day the first smaller paper appeared: "Your print
Journal
will now focus even more on 'what the news means,' beyond simply what happened yesterday."

Crovitz told readers that the paper would "now aim to make eighty per cent of your
Journal
what-it-means journalism." Brauchli had chimed in with his own explanation of the paper's values. "The
Journal
is not really about pack journalism," Brauchli said. "We assume people will get general-interest news not aimed at our audience [elsewhere]. We then step back from the news."

The paper had been operating in its new format for over three months the day Brauchli received Crovitz's call, and even though it had been panned by some—the
Columbia Journalism Review
headlined its story on the redesign "Shrinky-Dink WSJ"—the effort was deemed a success by Zannino and the board. So when Crovitz, entirely unaware of the Murdoch offer that would change all their lives so profoundly, called Brauchli the afternoon of April 17, he asked simply, "Are you planning on going to the annual meeting tomorrow?" Both he and Brauchli knew the new managing editor would be announced the following day after the annual meeting. Both men knew the job was Brauchli's. When Brauchli replied that yes, of course, he was attending the meeting, Crovitz said, "If you'd like I thought we could walk over together." It was the anointing Brauchli had been expecting. Paul Ingrassia wouldn't learn his fate until the following morning.

 

That evening, after the Murdoch offer had come in and after Brauchli had gotten the signal he would be named the new managing editor, Brauchli and Murdoch's editor Thomson met for a drink that became dinner at the casual bistro French Roast on 11th Street and Sixth Avenue to discuss the day's events.

Thomson had once lived nearby when he was the U.S. editor of the
Financial Times,
and the restaurant was one of his favorite haunts. In his signature black suit, Thomson arrived first, and the two sat down to a dinner of Niçoise salads (both men were slender, and Brauchli did not eat red meat) and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir. Thomson was there to gather intelligence for Murdoch, to woo Brauchli and get him on the right side. He wanted to convince Brauchli that Murdoch's ideas were good for the paper. The irony was that many of Murdoch's ideas for the paper had come from Thomson himself, during the many months the two had discussed the
Journal.
While Jimmy Lee gave Murdoch tactical assistance, Thomson was Murdoch's spiritual adviser for the takeover of the paper.