War at the Wall Street Journal (27 page)

Over the next several weeks, the Bancrofts suffered a final ignominy. After the deal was signed, they attempted to choose their representative to the News Corp. board, the family member who was to preserve Barron's legacy. Fractious as always, the Bancrofts missed their deadline. Murdoch made the choice for them, vetoing the family's first selection and instead picking a twenty-seven-year-old opera singer, Natalie Bancroft, whose greatest qualification for Murdoch was that unlike some of her Hill and Goth cousins, she held the right surname and wouldn't raise a fuss in the boardroom.

O
N AUGUST
1, 2007, the morning of Barry Diller's party, Steiger was not the man in the newsroom's big office. Three months before, Steiger had retired from his role and handed the reins to his successor, Marcus Brauchli. Now, the morning meetings were more businesslike and less political. But another presence, though not in the room, loomed over the proceedings. That particular morning, after 105 years, Dow Jones was promised to a new owner, Rupert Murdoch. The news of the offer dominated the
Journal
's own front page, a sign that even this paper could make accommodations to the day's news. Murdoch was a man widely mistrusted and quietly despised in the newsroom. The editors in the meeting, few of whom had made any feeling toward Murdoch known throughout the long battle for ownership of the paper, were skittish. They worried about the future of the newspaper business and they feared for their own employment. The new regime would come to see their morning gathering as a sleepy vestige of the
Journal
's stultified past. Under Murdoch, the meeting would shift to mimic those in countless newsrooms across the country. They would talk about the biggest news of the day and those stories—scoops or not, fresh or not—would go on the front page.

Brauchli had yet to develop into his new role, though he had been training for it for years. He still seemed uncomfortable standing in the spotlight rather than sitting in the peanut gallery with everybody else. Every new editor is deemed unworthy at the start, and Brauchli was no exception. He was much younger than some of his erstwhile rivals, and his methods sometimes left the vanquished feeling stung. "You have to remember how Marcus rose to power," they would say. "It wasn't through building alliances; it was through proving that he was smarter than the rest of us." Brauchli seemed younger than he was and did little to change others' impressions of him. He tried to remain chummy in the newsroom. While Steiger took a car service to work, Brauchli still hopped on the subway every morning, and if he ran into a colleague, he would regale the listener with his latest take on the economy or finance or the odd dinner he had had the night before.

His most important quality, however, at that moment, the morning when the
Wall Street Journal
became a Murdoch paper, with its attendant stigma, was that Brauchli was one of those in the newsroom who knew and loved the old
Journal
and appreciated the old way of doing things. Though Brauchli had campaigned hard for his job and made some sacrifices to get there (spearheading an effort to shrink the width of the
Journal
in an effort to save money and win favor with his bosses), he was a more trusted source than the mogul waiting uptown.

Earlier that morning, Brauchli had sat at his desk in his corner office on the ninth-floor newsroom staring at an e-mail he had written the previous weekend. Just three months earlier he had moved in, and the office was barely unpacked. Boxes and papers sat on the floor, and the shelves held a few stacks of files and a handful of books, but there were no family photos, no happy souvenirs to mark his short tenure in this prestigious post. The entire summer had been an exercise in political survival. He had advised the Bancroft family on an editorial independence agreement they wanted in order to protect the
Journal
from Rupert Murdoch, while at the same time he had back-channeled with his friend and Murdoch intimate Robert Thomson to protect himself. If you were lucky enough to find him in his office at all that summer, he would often be rubbing his hands to stay warm in the air conditioning, looking more tired than was humanly possible for a man of forty-six and, in private moments, a bit stunned by the turn of events.

As people filed into the 10:30 meeting, Brauchli thought back to the very early morning. He had sent his e-mail to the staff at 6:45 a.m., having reread it and rephrased it before finally hitting Send. An exercise in management-speak crossed incongruously with precise journalistic prose, the note urged his staff to stay focused on their jobs and not be distracted. With a simple subject line—
ON THE NEWS—
the e-mail began:

 

Today's news that a decisive proportion of Bancroft family trusts will vote in favor of News Corp.'s proposed acquisition of Dow Jones begins a process that will affect us all, but won't change what we do in the newsroom.

As journalists at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, we have always focused on maintaining the high quality and integrity of our work, without regard to our ownership. We will continue to do so.

Our journalism defines the Journal. A change in ownership won't change our understanding of what's important; our ability to compellingly explain the world, politics and business; or our commitment to reporting that is accurate, honest and free of slant.

We know that a successful news organization's first obligation is to its readers. We must serve them, recognizing that their interests and needs change constantly, and that we will have to change with them.

It is too early to know how or even whether News Corp. ownership might alter priorities or structures at Dow Jones. Our current and likely future owners have given formal assurances, however, that the newsroom will retain its independence.

An owner who values editorial independence is essential to the Journal's success. Yet it is we who ultimately will ensure it, through the continued quality and integrity of our work.

Clarence Barron's heirs in the Bancroft family have been loyal and proud stewards of The Wall Street Journal for nearly 80 years. The Journal today, in print, online and in new media, in the U.S. and internationally, sets the highest journalistic standard thanks to their long support. I hope you share in my deep gratitude to them.

Regards,

Brauchli, New York

 

The language was characteristically understated for a twenty-year veteran of the
Journal,
where euphemism approached an art form.

It fell to Brauchli to hold things together in the newsroom. He was barely perceptible to Murdoch, who in his career had encountered and dispensed with many more established editors. But Brauchli hoped and believed that he could outwit the cadre of News Corp. higher-ups who governed his future. He shifted immediately into a protectionist mode. The incredible thing about Brauchli's note to his staff that morning was not its astonishing banality and familiar corporate-speak of the conquered, but that in a newsroom full of gimlet-eyed cynics, so many people believed it.

As he began the morning meeting, Brauchli kicked things off with a joke about the wide range of the
Journal
's coverage in the current edition. That day, the paper was filled with stories about Dow Jones as if little else in the world mattered. He urged the editors to continue, despite uncertainty around the future of the paper, to focus on doing what they did best: produce stories the paper could be proud of. Just then, Brauchli's assistant appeared at the door.

"Rupert Murdoch is calling."

And there it was, the new order. Her words interrupted the usual banter. Brauchli jumped to take the call. The first news meeting of the Murdoch era, and already the old man had interfered with the process. This would become a familiar ritual in the coming months. The remaining editors couldn't help but note the irony in the moment. Then they continued on, amid nervous laughter, to discuss the contents of the next day's paper.

When he walked back to his office to pick up the phone, it turned out his haste was unwarranted. Murdoch left him on hold for a few minutes before picking up. The mogul gave a terse apology, quickly moving to the business of the call.

"I hear you are worried about people leaving the paper," he said. He knew his reputation and had been reminded of it in the past three months as every major media outlet in the country scrutinized his record. He and those around him saw the coverage as an attack from a biased media. Murdoch would later say he withstood the barbs due "a genocidal tyrant." Media critic Jack Shafer of Slate.com would adopt the phrase as his pet name for Murdoch, who nursed a sense of aggrievement. This attitude helped fuel his perennial exhortations to staff to challenge the establishment and helped him galvanize his almost sixty thousand employees. It gave the company, an otherwise inexplicable jumble of media and entertainment properties, its identity. News Corp. grew thanks to Murdoch's opportunistic and haphazard acquisitions, but it never had a coherent reason for being as a business. The company did what Murdoch wanted. Despite some very high-profile mistakes (near bankruptcy in the early 1990s and disastrous acquisitions such as Gemstar and
TV Guide),
everyone had benefited. Now he was nearing eighty years of age. Newspapers were dying. News Corp.'s stock price had plummeted. The old titan still dodged questions about his succession. But some in his circle had started to think, gingerly, about how to define the company beyond the man.

 

Anyone assessing Murdoch's bid for the
Journal
that summer felt obliged to mention, ominously, that "the alternatives" to Murdoch were grim. The Bancrofts had grown up with the implicit assumption that the moment they decided to sell the paper they would face an eager line of buyers. However, when they finally realized they were ready to sell, they saw it was too late for all that. Their erstwhile suitors had problems of their own, and if they didn't, the
Journal
was no longer as attractive a partner. They judged Murdoch not solely on his merits but against the dearth of other options.

The
Journal
's newsroom hadn't launched a serious revolt against Murdoch's bid, a signal of the staff's weak position in a shrinking industry. Murdoch's reputation in the United States had benefited from his longevity. As Noah Cross said in
Chinatown:
"Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." He could have added newspaper barons. At other outlets, such as
New York
magazine, the staff had staged a deadline walkout to protest Murdoch's imminent takeover of their publication. At the
Journal,
a lonely group of reporters tried to drum up a protest to the offer and were admired but largely ignored by the nervous staff. Most were too busy watching counterparts at other struggling papers lose their jobs as newspaper executives more fearful than Murdoch retreated from the industry even as he dove in. Still, the group had coaxed a good many of the
Journal
's staffers to write letters to Bancroft family board members urging them not to sell. And those letters were the weapon Leslie Hill chose to brandish when she stood in front of her family and urged them, fruitlessly, not to sell the company her great-grandfather had bought and her family had controlled for 105 years. Brauchli was worried that each person who had penned an impassioned plea against Murdoch might walk out now that the deal was signed. "I'm more concerned about people feeling morally obliged to resign because they campaigned against you," Brauchli replied.

But Murdoch, whose relationship to most reporters who worked for his papers was that of a man to his desk chair—"Murdoch looks upon you as furniture," the mogul's lawyer told Ken Auletta during the
New York
magazine takeover—urged Brauchli not to worry. "You shouldn't hold on to people to just hold on to them," he said.

Wanting to quickly acquaint himself with this editor at the top of the crown jewel of his $5-billion-plus purchase, Murdoch invited Brauchli, whom he had never met, to breakfast or lunch that coming Friday. Perhaps in retaliation for waiting on hold for a few minutes and perhaps because he needed some time to think about the shark before he climbed into his tank, Brauchli told Murdoch he would have to check his calendar and give him a call back.

 

That afternoon, Dow Jones CEO Rich Zannino came down from the executive eleventh floor to the newsroom to address the staff about the morning's announcement. In a French blue shirt with linen trousers and brown loafers, he was improbably tan and healthy given how much time he had spent these past three months in conference rooms negotiating to sell the company. Next to him, Brauchli looked pale and thin, a mien that would only amplify in the coming months. Zannino's message about the deal was simple: "A lot's been written, a lot's been said about it, and as I think about it and as I cut through it all, my summary of it would be: this deal makes a tremendous amount of sense for Dow Jones. It's a terrific opportunity for the company; it's a terrific opportunity for our shareholders; it's a terrific opportunity for all of us as employees of Dow Jones." He didn't mention his $16 million severance payment, which made it a terrific deal for him, but the crowd before him didn't need to be reminded. He went on for just a few minutes and then asked for questions. As Zannino fielded them, and passed many of them on to the new managing editor, Brauchli felt all the responsibility for the
Journal
accumulate at his feet. It was his paper to protect, not Zannino's, he realized.

 

On August 3, Brauchli arrived in one of the small executive dining rooms on News Corp.'s third floor for his appointed breakfast with Murdoch. He saw the scalps of former conquests hanging on the walls around him: dust jackets of HarperCollins books and corporate paraphernalia were the décor. The two chatted about the economy, and Murdoch grilled Brauchli on his opinions. It was clear to Brauchli that Murdoch was testing him, seeing how much or how little he enjoyed his new editor's company.