War at the Wall Street Journal Read Online Free PDF Page A

Zannino, played on the same ice hockey team as Jimmy's son, Jamie Lee—the Brunswick Bruins. As parents often do, Zannino and Jimmy chatted at games and bonded over their kids.
    Zannino, with thick dark hair and square-jawed good looks, carried himself with sporty, casual ease. He had often talked to Jimmy about how he couldn't do big enough deals. Dow Jones was small and shackled to the
Journal,
which howled at the tiniest budget cut that diminished its reporting resources or staff. "I can't roll the dice," he told Jimmy. Zannino, with his Pace MBA and blue-collar bite, was greeted with some suspicion by the Ivy Leaguers of Dow Jones. But, despite their frosty attitudes, these naysayers hoped that he would be able to figure out what to do about the company's dire business prospects.
    In the year before Jimmy's call to Zannino, the
Journal
had been tested. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had decimated the company's headquarters. As the World Trade Center towers fell, the impact shattered the windows of Dow Jones, blowing heavy debris across desks, blanketing the
Journal
newsroom with white ash. The
Journal
's long-serving managing editor, Paul Steiger, led reporters and editors across the river to Dow Jones's offices in New Jersey, where a skeleton staff produced a paper that appeared—remarkably—on doorsteps the morning of September 12, complete with a harrowing eyewitness account of the towers' fall. The paper won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of that day, which was, the Pulitzer committee said, "executed under the most difficult circumstances." It was a defining moment for the paper. As if the decimated offices weren't enough, just months after the attacks talented feature writer Daniel Pearl, South Asia bureau chief, was abducted and brutally murdered while investigating Al Qaeda links to the "shoe bomber," Richard Reid.
    The
Journal
and Dow Jones felt under siege. In a normally skeptical newsroom, there was suddenly shared purpose with everyone from the Bancrofts to Peter Kann. All rallied to support the institution, and Steiger, already beloved, became something of a saint. The Dow Jones "family," as Kann called it, drew together. The newsroom, always aware of its status as belonging to one of a chosen few elite papers in the country, was newly devoted to its mission and the family who allowed them to pursue their craft without the meddling of a more business-minded corporate parent. But such sentiment couldn't beat back the business pressures plaguing the company. The steep drop in advertising revenue that plagued the
Journal
following September 11 was dragging down the entire newspaper industry.
    Zannino arrived at Dow Jones in February 2001 as chief financial officer. Seventeen months later, he was on the phone with Jimmy Lee, who loved to chide his pal. "You're too small," he would say about Dow Jones. "You can't take a gamble." But it was all just fun: Jimmy knew he was dealing with a guy who understood the world as he did, through stock prices, profits, and fees. Zannino, he knew, wanted to make his company a place where good journalists practiced journalism and good businesspeople took care of the business. Jimmy thought, "Maybe this is the guy who provides the bridge. And I know someone who can cross it." The person he was thinking of? Rupert Murdoch. Of course.
    As Jimmy stood in his office on that morning in July 2002, pen poised, waiting for Zannino to pick up the phone, he thought, "I can deliver this." After congratulating Zannino on his new appointment as chief operating officer, which had been announced earlier that month, and making the requisite small talk, Jimmy launched into the purpose of the call.
    "So, isn't it time for you guys to do a deal?" Jimmy asked.
    "The Bancroft family holds all the cards," Zannino replied, in what would become a standard refrain.
    Jimmy took his pen and wrote down his notes from the conversation.
    The words stared back at