War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire. Sarah Ellison. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Inc., 2010. 274 pp.
The sale of the Wall Street Journal in 2007 was a major news event, and rightly so. After all, the newspaper had (and still has) the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United States. Founded in 1889, it soon came to be recognized as the nation’s preeminent business publication. When it was sold by the Bancroft family, which held a controlling interest, the buyer was perhaps the best-known and most controversial figure in modern journalism: Rupert Murdoch, the owner of global media giant News Corporation. Many of the circumstances surrounding the sale only added to the story’s appeal.
At the time, Sarah Ellison was the Journal’s media reporter and assigned to cover the story. She has taken advantage of her unique knowledge and insight, along with her first-rate writing skills, to provide a detailed, balanced, and thoroughly engaging account of the sale. Beginning with Murdoch’s dealings with Jimmy Lee from J.P. Morgan to put in place the funding for his offer, and continuing through the transition in the Journal’s newsroom after the sale, Ellison leads the reader through the developments as they unfolded. Her account has a novel-like quality to it: The story’s character development is outstanding, and she interjects enough suspense around the many conflicts that arose to make this a book that is hard to put down.
Most of the news coverage of this sale portrayed Murdoch as arch-villain, who would almost certainly destroy the tremendous journalistic equity that the Bancroft family and existing management had worked so hard to develop—many envisioned the Journal becoming nothing more than a right-wing tabloid. Coverage tended to ignore how poorly the Journal was doing financially (attributing this to the downturn in the economy and/or to what the Internet was doing to all newspapers), or how little involvement (or interest in journalism) most of the Bancrofts had. There was significant discord among Bancroft family members, many of whom were interested only in their dividend checks; none actually worked for the Journal at the time of the sale. Coverage also tended to ignore Murdoch’s love of and commitment to print journalism.
Ellison’s account provides an excellent counterbalance to the hyperbole that typically permeated most coverage of the WSJ’s transition, as she painstakingly takes the reader through each important step leading to the final outcome. Along the way, she offers considerable evidence, both direct and indirect, to support her conclusions regarding the priorities, motivations, and dominant personal characteristics of all the key players. As such, this account represents a good example of what solid, in-depth journalism looks like.
That said, if this is all that the book represented, it would have little to recommend itself to mass communication scholars, other than as a good read. After all, the book is clearly written for a general audience—one need only look at the title and book’s cover to confirm this. But Ellison uses the story to frame a discussion that should be of real interest to both journalism scholars and media economists: the development of a successful business strategy for traditional journalism in this digital age.
The first phase of the strategy discussion focuses on efforts by the Journal to restore its profitability. Ellison describes two initiatives: one designed to reduce costs by merging the Dow Jones News Wire staff with the Journal’s newsroom. The second was a plan to redesign the print newspaper so that breaking news would be published on the Journal’s Web site, while the print product would be reserved for more in-depth and analytical pieces. The first was an effort to converge two parts of the business, and the second was an effort to ensure that the Journal remained a unique journalistic enterprise in the face of growing competition by creating a clear distinction between the print newspaper and the organization’s Web site, something many newspapers have yet to do. However, both initiatives reflected a “defensive” strategy, one designed to protect the existing franchise rather than offering a path to growth.
This discussion of the previous management’s strategic thinking provides the starting point for her discussion of Murdoch’s strategy for the enterprise, a strategy that assumes the Journal’s brand, which has “quality journalism” as one attribute, can be extended. He envisioned making the Journal a hybrid business publication and general-interest newspaper that would reach a wider audience (and could effectively compete against the New York Times). Thus far, this strategy does not appear to be working—the Journal is losing more money today than before Murdoch bought the company; Murdoch argues that he is producing “a better newspaper.”
Fortunately, Murdoch’s News Corporation can afford to absorb these losses—offering support for those who argue that media consolidation has an upside. What Murdoch’s strategy, like those of the previous management, has ignored is the lack of support for the management from current employees. The Journal provides an excellent example of the “resistance” many scholars have written about.
Ellison at times succumbs to the temptation to fit little vignettes that she has learned about during her research into the larger narrative. While most are interesting in themselves, they often take the reader away from the main story or point she is trying to make. However, these digressions are minor and greatly outweighed by the overall merits of the book.
DAN SULLIVAN
University of Minnesota