20. Resigned

ON AN UNSEASONABLY COOL April morning, Murdoch, looking buoyant, boarded his 130-foot Boeing jet, spacious enough in a standard model to accommodate 125 people but shuttling only 5 that day. Given Murdoch's plans, his mood might have convinced those who called him cold-blooded of the accuracy of their description. Maybe it was the prospect of change, not the task ahead, that was energizing him.

Murdoch passed distractedly down the long corridor lined with blond wood and past the bedroom, tastefully decorated with a beige bedspread and ivory pillows and blankets. He shuffled past the private meeting room with a long conference table surrounded by seven seafoam-green leather easy chairs. The flight attendant, Peggy, busied herself arranging the pillows and otherwise tidied up. Idle hands, her activity suggested, need not apply.

Murdoch threw himself down on a plush seat at the back of the plane, which was among the largest on the private tarmac. "Oh, the Arabs' planes are bigger," he casually offered to Gary Ginsberg, his spokesman, who was waiting for him. Added fuel tanks on this model allowed him to travel ten hours without stopping—nice for trips back to his native Australia, where he traveled at least once a year and which, after all these years away, still remained the continent on which he felt most at ease.

Today, the trip was less ambitious. They were headed to Washington, DC, to a dinner honoring Murdoch at the Atlantic Council—a nonpartisan think tank that aspired to promote civilian dialogue among NATO member countries. Spain's former prime minister José Maria Aznar, a fellow conservative and News Corp. board member, had suggested Murdoch for the award, and while skeptical of the organization, Murdoch wanted to help his friend. Such awards were obligations for him and the dinners that accompanied them almost lethal. The Distinguished Business Award event would normally have been no night to remember, but he would be there, smiling occasionally and feigning interest in the proceedings. At least he would be sitting next to Henry Kissinger, which might prove entertaining.

 

The night before the plane trip to DC, Murdoch took his two youngest daughters, ages six and four, out to dinner. "A big adventure," he said. "Dinner with Daddy." The domestic evening of dinner with the girls behind him, Murdoch was on the plane to DC, about to make his move. He would show that the Journal was under his control. Four months after Murdoch's deal for the Journal had closed, Marcus Brauchli, the managing editor of the paper, was about to leave the picture.

"It'll all be finalized in two hours," Murdoch said to Ginsberg.

Many times the News Corp. "pirates" had signaled the arrival of the new order with the tossing of figureheads. Often Murdoch explicitly fired them, but many times they got the message and jumped before they were pushed. The only consistency was that they left. Dorothy Schiff was supplanted at the New York Post, New York's Clay Felker was ejected, Harry Evans of the Times of London was suddenly redundant. Murdoch made no concessions to sentiment or even familial association. As everyone knew, Murdoch had allowed News Corp. executives like Roger Ailes, the former Nixon speechwriter, to undermine his tattooed and athletic elder son, Lachlan, whom Murdoch had trained from his earliest days to take over at the company. Ailes prevailed—he'd won the old man's affection by building Fox News. At Dow Jones, it had been similar. Zannino offered to leave his post but simultaneously said, "'I'll hang around and help or be available if you like,'" Murdoch remembered. "But I've taken up offers like that in the past. And then I moved in, and always by the afternoon of the first day, I'm telling the guy to put his hat on and get out."

For almost a year, Brauchli had a lame-duck tenure, delicately attempting to protect himself from his new boss's encroachments. Not for a day had Brauchli appeared truly in charge. His limited reach wasn't a shock; he'd seen all of this coming and was holding out as best he could. Shortly after Murdoch's bid for the Journal became public, Brauchli sighed, saying to a friend, "I work my whole career to get this job and now I'm working for Murdoch?"

On the plane, Murdoch was dressed in a chalk-stripe gray flannel suit with a white spread-collar shirt and a red patterned tie. He scanned the morning's Journal and looked with disappointment at his new toy.

"It's starting to look like a real newspaper," attempted Ginsberg, hoping to draw out his boss on the paper. The reaction was muted.

Murdoch's brow furrowed. His white handkerchief peeked out of his front breast pocket, like the white roots that betrayed his pale brown dyed hair. "The stories could be better, but it's a start."

This morning, April 21, 2008, was the first day of the official redesign that was inching the paper in the direction where Murdoch wanted it to move. Previously the old Journal, with its airless but important appearance, had seemed beyond time's changes, newsstand appeal, and even questions of readability. It seemed designed for those so seriously and closely intertwined in the events described that not even a nuance could be sacrificed. The paper's front page had contained three lengthy feature stories every day down its sides and middle, like columns adorning the front of an ancient temple. In lieu of sensational photos, the page showcased stately ink-drawn portraits of the business figures it featured. Even before Murdoch, the temple had been under siege: breaking news, color, and photos, the province of the populist papers, had nosed their way into those sacrosanct spaces.

The changes Brauchli and others had rushed to make were evident in that morning's paper, which displayed a new sports page, more political coverage, shorter stories, and bigger headlines. The unusual vertical design that had graced the front page of the Journal for most of its history had all but disappeared. The day before Pennsylvanians were to vote in a primary for either Hillary or Obama, political stories—accompanied by large color photos—dominated the front page. A four-column headline stretched over them, announcing in tall, bold letters: "Latest Attacks Roil Democrats."

The notion that the Journal could be a second read, famously espoused by the legendary midcentury Journal editor Barney Kilgore, was no more. No one had time to read two publications. And anyway, Murdoch didn't want to be second at anything. As smaller papers around the country faltered, Murdoch wanted to pick off their readers. Turning to the second section of the Journal, "Marketplace," he mused, "I think we'll change it from 'Marketplace' to 'Business.'"

He paused briefly, then said, "I don't know." Then he abruptly shot down his own suggestion. It seemed that Murdoch wasn't exactly certain what he wanted to do with the paper he had coveted for twenty years. At first, his judgments had looked haphazard; he demanded the paper make its Web site free and then would reverse himself once presented with Dow Jones's research on the money such a decision could cost the company. He was an improviser.

Though the paper wasn't what he wanted it to be yet, he was casual, confident, and unconcerned. The Journal would evolve, each move making possible the next, and in time a new personality—breathless, naive, and attention-getting—would greet readers who once considered the paper the province of carefully considered judgments and old blue suits. "More graphics, with more color; just you wait," he murmured.

He opened the Financial Times, London's Journal equivalent, which Murdoch had attempted—and uncharacteristically failed—to buy years before. He glanced through, looking for lessons. As he scanned the pages, he noted the preeminence of reports from behind the scenes. He loved colorful quotes. Murdoch was a fan of full access and on-the-ground reporting. He didn't want his reporters analyzing; he wanted them pounding the pavement, telling him what the important people had to say about important things.

"See, they have very strong reporting on Obama and Clinton. In the FT, you hear word for word what they're saying, they have somebody with them, you can tell." He took a quick look at the Journal. "Our story," he said, pausing. "Typical overediting." But then he pulled back, not wanting to be too harsh. "You could argue it either way."

As he was no longer the renegade never invited to dinner, Murdoch now found himself a tourist attraction for the obsequious politicos and dignitaries on global jaunts. They knew, as he did, that enemies and opponents were best kept on a first-name basis. He enjoyed their entreaties. He wasn't afraid of making his own. Right now, Murdoch wanted a sit-down with Obama, and Ginsberg wanted to firm up a meeting between his boss and the young candidate who was closing in on the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton was expected to win in Pennsylvania, but Obama was the star and had the momentum.

Murdoch made a point of establishing friendly relationships with politicians in his adopted homes. When Hillary Clinton stepped up to become senator from New York, Murdoch made a bridge to her as a fellow pragmatist. She was planning to run for president and didn't hold grudges. The Journal's editorial page never made such allowances. It had hounded the Clintons for everything but their fashion decisions and devotion to fast food. In a particularly vicious attack in June 1993, the editorial page singled out Vincent Foster, deputy White House counsel and a former law partner of the then First Lady, with the headline "Who Is Vincent Foster?" Other editorials about Foster and his role in the Clinton White House followed. On July 20, 1993, Foster was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. With him was a suicide note of sorts, reading, "The WSJ editors lie without consequence." But Hillary let it all go and came to the table. Her reward was what seemed to be, at the top of the primary season, Murdoch's support.

Hillary wasn't the stock to buy at this juncture. Murdoch, intrigued by Obama and his surprise win in the Iowa caucus, had started to distance himself from Senator Clinton. Months earlier, in January, Murdoch's New York Post endorsed Obama over the former first lady, disappointing those in the Clinton camp who had pieced together the rapprochement with Murdoch. Ginsberg, who had worked for the Clintons years earlier, had reached out to Obama numerous times, but to no avail. Obama-ites, including Al Gore and others, said the candidate was interested in talking to Murdoch. Yet no meeting was forthcoming. The latest intermediary, former U.S. senator Tom Daschle, had broached the subject to Ginsberg, who decided on the plane to gauge his boss's interest in pursuing a meeting.

"We don't want to be supplicants," Ginsberg said quietly to Murdoch.

"On the other hand," replied Murdoch, looking toward the window that morning on the plane, privately exploring an altogether different angle, "we don't want him to win the presidency thinking we are bitterly hostile."

Just before 10:00 a.m. as the plane lifted off, Murdoch's thoughts turned to his comments for the lunch with Atlantic Council members that day. He went over his address for the gathering. Like the dinner speech, these words were written by recently retired Bush speechwriter William McGurn. Murdoch had just hired him as his speechwriter; in a pleasant felicitous synergy, McGurn's column debuted on the op-ed page of the Journal that morning.

His carefully organized pages in hand, Murdoch asked Peggy, the flight attendant, for some coconut water, one of his favorite health boosters. Murdoch was always looking for a way to maintain his energy, to stay youthful, to not slow down. It was one of the habits that betrayed his awareness of growing older, a bit of reality he successfully ignored. Wendi had banned dessert as part of an effort to keep Murdoch slim. Peggy placed a lowball glass in the gold-rimmed built-in coaster in front of her employer, who stood up and raised it. "It's a magic potion. No calories, and packed with all sorts of..." He trailed off, snapping his fingers together, trying to remember the name. "Electrolytes," he finally resolved, heading down the hallway to his private meeting room as the plane passed over New Jersey.

 

Two weeks before, on April 7 to be exact, Marcus Brauchli sat in the dingy ninth-floor conference room of Dow Jones's headquarters in Battery Park City. He had arranged for the chiefs of domestic and foreign bureaus to call in that morning to hear a discussion of the paper's proposed direction. Around the table, deputy managing editor for news coverage Bill Grueskin, Page One editor Mike Williams, and deputy managing editor Alix Freedman all sat with him. The New York chiefs also gathered to hear a new way to think about the paper. Brauchli hand-picked Grueskin and Williams for their jobs. Each, like Brauchli, possessed a desire to change the paper and the confidence to think they were the right men to do it. Freedman was the longest-serving deputy M.E. of the three and the only one to survive Brauchli's management shuffle intact. She was now the anointed keeper of the Journal's ethical standards.

Murdoch's outspoken statements that there were too many editors at the paper—he had repeated his amazement that stories in the Journal were touched "an average of 8.3 times" before appearing in print—fueled anxieties that were already running high. Fear of firings (what was a Murdoch takeover without a bloodletting?) accelerated as the new era announced itself in not-so-subtle ways. Traditional "leders," the long, narrative, front-page stories that were a Journal trademark, were disappearing in favor of shorter news stories. Brevity was always desirable these days. So was anything political. Coverage of the presidential primaries dominated the front page in a paper that had originally made its name with enlightening features on business and the economy. This revolution had originally been instigated by Brauchli, but it was Murdoch's message that had been heard loud and clear around the Journal empire.

Engaging and charming one-on-one, Brauchli fell apart in front of crowds, cracking obscure jokes and making casual remarks that sometimes left permanent scars. Brauchli was a constant planner, often weighing how to get his way while giving his audience the perception that they had gotten what they wanted. His promotion strained this strategy. He had too many constituents to please all of a sudden, including Murdoch. He was determined to win over Murdoch and, at the same time, carefully counter him.

In the past few months Brauchli had appeared pale and gaunt, constantly rushing to get somewhere else but never quite arriving. The editors who worked for him could barely get a moment alone to discuss a story—he was too preoccupied with the task of preserving his publication to run it. Most dangerous, though, was his lack of combat training; he had no notion of the tested and gradually perfected tactics that allowed Murdoch to plot a murder while smiling at the face of the chosen victim. Brauchli read up on his subject. Andrew Neil had written in his book Full Disclosure that Murdoch had courted and then shunned him when he was the editor of Murdoch's Sunday Times. Brauchli, like Neil, felt he would be the exception, the one to make it work with Murdoch.

As the meeting began, the stressed-out Brauchli attempted to articulate his editorial philosophy, which he hoped would not be too distant from his new employer's vision of what the paper should be. "Every story on Page One has to compete for space and length," he said. This represented a break from the Journal's past. No longer would feature stories dominate the page. Williams, the Page One editor, explained this further: the front page would be more responsive to news. He had already sent out memos to the staff urging them to write shorter stories and be punchier in their writing. Bureau chiefs chafed at their glibness. Grueskin, formerly the head of the paper's Web site, urged more news breaks and online packages.

But Brauchli had a credibility problem. This latest direction for the Journal was the polar opposite of what he and Crovitz had championed the entire previous year.

Now, in 2008, as he pushed a message in the meeting that the Journal would cover more politics and general news, he wasn't admitting even to himself that the previous redesign of the paper promoted exactly the type of story his new boss despised. Murdoch wanted straight news stories, and Brauchli found himself in the difficult position of backtracking. His new message undermined the old one. This is what his life had become, a series of misfired communications and bureaucratic gatherings. The non-New York bureau chiefs listened via conference call as Brauchli led the meeting. The people in the room could sometimes hear them snickering.

Toward the end of the meeting, Brauchli checked his BlackBerry and saw that he had a message from Thomson. He told the group he had to excuse himself and go to another meeting. Brauchli returned the call. "We have to go and talk to Les," Thomson said, referring to Leslie Hinton.

The two men walked to Hinton's office; he had just returned from a trip to China.

"Ni hao," Brauchli said, Mandarin for "hello." Hinton didn't smile.

"There's no easy way to put this but we want you to step down as managing editor. We don't think things are working out. We'd like to make a change." Neither Hinton nor Thomson went into detail or explained why. Brauchli knew they were merely handing down a verdict arrived at by their boss.

 

Murdoch's influence often began with installing a like-minded editor. As a student of history, Brauchli shouldn't have been surprised. Plus, so many of his colleagues were already missing: the eleventh-floor executive ranks had been decimated. Stuart Karle, the beloved newsroom lawyer who had edited the Columbia Daily Spectator when Brauchli was a reporter, recently had been fired. Brauchli had imagined this grim scenario a hundred times, even going so far as to liken himself to a soldier in Iraq who sees officers shot and wonders if the next bullet is for him.

Suddenly, he heard himself say, "I think it would be impossible for me to remain as editor if I don't have the support of the owner." His twenty-four years of climbing ended abruptly with that sentence. "I'll do whatever I feel is in the best interests of the Journal as an institution, including stepping down if necessary. But I think you're making a mistake."

Thomson chimed in. "Don't worry. We can take care of you financially."

"We'll figure it out," Brauchli replied, and then decided to get a lawyer. He soon hired Robert Barnett, the always cheerful, $975-an-hour Washington power broker who represented both of the Clintons, Bob Woodward, Lynne Cheney, Alan Greenspan, and Queen Noor of Jordan on their book deals. Barnett went to work; Brauchli went ahead with plans for a trip to Asia and the Journal's California bureaus while Barnett handled the details of his "resignation."

That night, Brauchli and Thomson went out for a drink at Moran's Irish bar, one of the regular newsroom post-deadline watering holes nearby. "This makes no sense," Brauchli said. He had been making changes to the paper, doing much of what Murdoch wanted, he thought. Thomson knew his boss too well: "The precipitating fact is the change in ownership. It's obvious."

Brauchli had been telling people in the preceding weeks that ed itorships weren't like rent-controlled apartments. "There are no squatters' rights," he would joke. He had been cast out of the job he had worked to obtain for a quarter of a century. His only option now that he had agreed to go was to negotiate how much his silence would be worth to News Corp. He would say that it was his choice to leave, but he had some leverage.

 

The plane had landed, and now, speeding along the highway in a black Suburban to downtown Washington, Murdoch and Ginsberg never turned from their cell phones. At some point Ginsberg noticed an e-mail from Marcus Brauchli about a planned breakfast. "That's weird," Ginsberg said, almost to himself. "I just got an e-mail from our friend M.B.," he told Murdoch, who was up in the front seat next to the driver.

Murdoch paused, looking puzzled. These initials meant nothing to him. For a moment, he seemed to have no memory of the man whom he had considered it necessary, at some earlier moment, to fire. "Who is that?" Murdoch asked.

Pushing himself forward from the back seat of the SUV past a faulty middle seat that was stuck and folded in half, Ginsberg started a whispered consultation with Murdoch, who was on the phone again after Ginsberg's last syllable.

It was 11:29 and Murdoch's attention had suddenly shifted. "Sam? Congratulations," he said in a suddenly cheery tone. Sam Zell, real estate magnate and fellow billionaire, had purchased the Tribune Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune and the owner of television stations and smaller papers. The tortured auction of Tribune was further confirmation of the newspaper industry's slide. Using very little of his own money, Zell financed the acquisition with debt that he was now struggling to pay off. To recoup a few hundred million, he had decided to sell the Long Island newspaper Newsday, a paper neither Murdoch nor Zell cared much about. Murdoch's interest in Newsday was only as a property that might prop up one of its competitors, his beloved New York Post. Combining the printing and distribution of the two papers would save him the $50 million a year he lost at the Post. It was a beautiful deal for him and his friend Jimmy Lee at JPMorgan, who had been integral to both the buyout financing of Zell's Tribune acquisition and a primary Murdoch adviser on the Dow Jones transaction. In the Newsday purchase, Lee had paired two of his best clients. (Murdoch never won the prize. Newsday went to the Dolan family, who controlled the cable company Cablevision. The Tribune purchase turned into a disaster for Zell. The company filed for bankruptcy in December 2008.)

At eleven thirty the car was halfway to the hotel and Murdoch picked up his phone again. It was Les Hinton. Hinton remembered fetching Murdoch sandwiches back in Adelaide when the two were working at Murdoch's first paper, the Adelaide News. Now there was this day's work to organize around a slight unpleasantness.

Murdoch's pledge not to interfere with the "editorial independence" of the Journal was being tested. Though many within News Corp. had found it mildly insulting to have to sign an agreement that implicitly said Murdoch was unfit to run a respectable paper, Murdoch was willing to weather such slights. They were minor, temporal; they always faded. Murdoch thought the separation between a newsroom and its owner was another false conceit of American newspapers, particularly those of the East Coast establishment variety. But if they helped him get what he wanted, he was willing to sign on to an artificial set of rules he would inevitably circumvent.

In this case, Murdoch had agreed to a five-person "Special Committee" designed to protect the Journal from editorial interference by the owner. The five members would each be paid $100,000 to go to four meetings a year. They would be on call for the managing editor and editorial page editor of the Journal in case either felt Murdoch was stepping across the line and inappropriately influencing the paper's coverage. The paper had previously been left to flourish without prying from the family. On any given day, the Bancrofts didn't know what was set to appear in the following day's Journal, nor did Dow Jones's business executives. The journalists were isolated and allowed to carry out their work uninterrupted, mostly happy to ignore the quickly eroding business prospects of Dow Jones.

"My own feeling is that I'll tell the Special Committee," Murdoch said. Meanwhile, Ginsberg, in the back of the car, was working his own angle, on the phone with Robert Thomson: "It's going to break tomorrow. It's really going to be bad if it breaks somewhere else," other than the Journal. Murdoch and Ginsberg were chatting, not to each other, but each working toward the same goal.

They rode for a few minutes in silence, until Ginsberg's cell buzzed with a text message from Journal editor Nik Deogun telling him the paper had caught wind of the situation and was soon going to put a story out on the wire. Grimacing at this inconvenience, Ginsberg called Thomson to discuss it. "Tell him to hold it and we'll give it to him exclusively," Ginsberg said, referring to Martin Peers, the Journal editor overseeing the story. "Tell them to hold it until we have a signed deal."

The black Suburban pulled into the driveway of the Ritz-Carlton and Murdoch stepped out of the car. He walked into the lobby and leaned against the front desk. "Rupert Murdoch; I'm checking in," he said. The pretty woman behind the desk smiled knowingly at this celebrity, quickly producing his swipe card for the elevator. The bellboy was starstruck. "Thank you very much, Mr. Murdoch, and it's a pleasure to meet you," he said eagerly.

Murdoch walked into his eleventh-floor Ritz-Carlton suite, booked for the night though he would stay for only a few hours that afternoon, and threw his coat down. Ginsberg and Bill McGurn followed, setting their bags down in the foyer. "It's huge," Murdoch commented as he lumbered toward the bedroom as if he were unaccustomed to such luxury.

Immediately, Ginsberg was on his cell phone again, dialing Robert Thomson, attempting damage control. The paper that Murdoch owned seemed intent on showing the world that it still had some spine. It wouldn't be scooped on its own news again. Standing by the window in the suite's marble foyer, Ginsberg put his cell phone on speaker as Murdoch approached. "Tell him to hold it and we'll give it to him exclusively," Ginsberg said to Thomson.

"Tell them to hold it until we have a signed deal," said Murdoch, wearily. This would be an annoyance for him, for this news to break before he had alerted the appropriate people. The contract that they had been haggling over with Brauchli's lawyer, Bob Barnett, for two weeks would be signed in a matter of hours, and then Murdoch wanted to personally call the members of the Special Committee to preempt any potential revolt in their ranks. "Can't we just say that this thing's been written and he's going to sign it?" Murdoch yelled, clearly accustomed to revising reality so the facts served his needs. But he had bent this one as far as he could. They had to wait for Brauchli to arrive in Washington and sign the contract.

"Marcus doesn't get off the train for another damn two hours?" Murdoch asked, incredulous. Ginsberg shook his head.

"I'm going to call him right now and say I'll call you at five and we can go over the story then," Ginsberg said. Murdoch, frustrated by these strictures, this tight timetable, was irritated the story couldn't be contained.

"They don't answer to News Corp.," Thomson's voice, tinny from the cell phone reception, told Ginsberg. "We can't tell them not to run a story."

Thomson, aware that his boss was losing patience, stressed to Ginsberg that Murdoch had to make the calls to the Special Committee before anything was announced. "He absolutely must call the Special Committee."

"And what do I do about the Journal?" asked Ginsberg.

"Just say, 'Give me a window and I'll give you the story.'"

"What publisher doesn't make the decision what to publish?" Murdoch said over the sound of the cell phone conversation. He stalked through the living room and past the marble fireplace to the bedroom.

Ginsberg called Martin Peers and promised he would give him the story later, when he could. "I'll make sure you don't get scooped," he said.

Murdoch returned to the living room and paced in a small circle, looking over the comments he would make at lunch. He held a single page of lined notebook paper in his hand, covered with his handwritten scrawl.

 

After lunch, Murdoch returned to the Ritz-Carlton suite, loosened his tie, and dropped onto the plush chair by the phone in the corner. Brauchli had not yet arrived in Washington. It was two fifteen, and Ginsberg dialed Thomson. "[Brauchli] could have been down there six hours ago," Thomson said, his voice frustrated and weary. Just that morning, instead of leaving early for DC, Brauchli had stayed in New York to keep up appearances. "We attended a meeting for WSJ .com and attempted a witty repartee to give the appearance of nothing happening," Thomson continued.

No one commented. Brauchli was out, essentially fired. Not in so many words, of course. No top executives were fired in modern corporations. Murdoch had another way of saying thanks for the memories. "OK," Murdoch said, pausing again. "But I don't see the purpose it serves" to go to the meetings, to pretend all was well.

Thomson sighed. "I don't either. Unless it is being seen as a trouper to the end, for whatever psychological purpose that would serve." Thomson continued, intent on the reason for the call, the instructions for Murdoch to complete the task. "What's implicit is an air of finality. That the discussion is over and as a courtesy, we are informing you. What Marcus has slightly in his head is that it isn't final until the Special Committee meets. They are under the impression that someone from News Corp., Mark [Jackson, Dow Jones's general counsel], is making the calls. What they don't know is Rupert is making the calls." If Murdoch made the calls, it would carry more weight. It would be harder for them to object. It would give Murdoch the outcome he wanted.

In the meantime, Rupert made other calls to Long Island congressmen, to smooth his way through acquiring Tribune Company's Newsday. Like a Great White, he had to keep moving to survive. After those calls, he dialed Jimmy Lee. "Did you have the conversation with the Journal about our subject of common interest?" Murdoch asked, wondering if word of his interest in Newsday had been leaked to his media outlet. "No, not yet," said Lee. "But it's OK. It's all been sent over and I talked to Sam [Zell]." He spoke quickly, bringing a smile to Murdoch's face, like a father indulging his precocious child.

At 4:27, the phone in the hotel suite rang again. The contract with Brauchli had been signed. Murdoch went immediately over to the phone on the desk at the window. He dialed the numbers of the members of the Special Committee. "I can't get anyone," he drawled softly after a round of unsuccessful calls.

Ginsberg, across the room on the couch, offered the cell numbers of the Special Committee members. Most worked, connecting Murdoch to a group of people he reassured with rare unctuousness, working off a script prepared for him by his general counsel Lon Jacobs.

He first tried Lou Boccardi, a respected journalist and a former CEO of the Associated Press. "Lou, this is Rupert Murdoch," he said. "Fairly urgent I speak to you. I'm temporarily reachable at 202-835-0500, room 1112. If you don't reach me, I'll try you back. It's fairly urgent I speak to you."

"Is Dean Phillips [Susan Phillips, dean of the George Washington University business school] there? Hi. Sorry to bother you. I'm calling the members of the committee as a courtesy to let you know the managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, has resigned." Pause. "He's been very careful to say we've behaved scrupulously but he feels it's time to move on." The plan would be to have a call at midday the next day.

"It's all very civil and friendly. I just thought I would tell you instead of you reading it. OK." Murdoch laughed. "I just thought we'd have a chat tomorrow and have him on the line."

Phillips thanked him for calling. "Not at all," he replied. "He's a very nice fellow. It's all been done in a very civilized way. Thanks so much. Not at all. Bye."

One down, four to go.

Murdoch repeated the same script with Jack Fuller, a Chicago Tribune Pulitzer Prize winner who went on to become the president of all of Tribune's newspaper operations. The call was quick and painless.

"Well, I got two," Murdoch said after hanging up.

Next, Murdoch updated Thomson on the calls to Phillips and Fuller. "We're going to send messages to their BlackBerrys to call here," Murdoch said.

Retrieving more cell numbers, Ginsberg called them out.

Murdoch placed a call to Tom Bray, the chairman of the committee and a former Detroit News editorial page editor who had written for the Journal's own editorial page. "Tom, sorry to bother you. This is to tell you the sad news [at this, Ginsberg chuckled] that Marcus Brauchli has resigned. It's all very civilized and friendly ... No, we don't have a replacement. But the idea is for Robert Thomson to go through the staff for someone for you to nominate.

"Let's talk tomorrow ... the idea would be to have a midday conference ... We're all very much of one mind," Murdoch said. And then he remembered Thomson's instructions—an air of finality. "Except that it is done ... Sorry to worry you with it."

Two to go.

"Lou? Rupert Murdoch here. Sorry to bother you. Just a call to tell you that Marcus Brauchli has resigned, all in a very friendly way. The idea is to get Robert Thomson to supervise until we can find another candidate to present ... It's all very friendly and he said we've behaved scrupulously ... He'll stay as a consultant for six months ... in setting up an Asian business channel."

But this call was longer than the rest. Lou Boccardi was Brauchli's pick for the Special Committee. "What did Marcus say?" Boccardi asked. Murdoch replied: "He's going to say he'd be more comfortable, everybody'd be more comfortable that the new regime have a new editor ... I have no doubt that the New York Times will make trouble with it for a day or two, but I'm not too bothered by it."

Click.

Finally, the task was completed, though the last member, Nicholas Negroponte, hadn't been called yet. Negroponte had been Murdoch's choice for the committee and was not a Brauchli loyalist. The Journal had scrutinized Negroponte's charity, One Laptop per Child, in a front-page story by investigative reporter Steve Stecklow not long before for struggling to distribute its promised laptops to the world's neediest children. Negroponte had privately expressed concern to Brauchli about the story. Brauchli glibly responded, "Oh, that's the first of a five-part series."

"On me?" Negroponte asked, incredulous.

"No, on each member of the committee," Brauchli deadpanned.

Murdoch did not expect Negroponte to object to the Brauchli resignation.

After all the calls, Murdoch announced, visibly relieved, "There's always a bit of nervous tension around things like that."

A moment later he picked up the phone to report back to Thomson. "I've spoken to everybody," he said. "We got them on their cellphones." Les Hinton was in the background, hovering to make sure Rupert's work was done. "Hi, Les. Everything's fine."

What was the reaction? Hinton asked. "Surprise, shock, horror," Murdoch quipped. "No, no horror. And we're all OK for a midday call tomorrow ... I've said Marcus would be on the phone and all of us, too." But what had he told them? "I said it's been very friendly. Scrupulous. And I made a statement praising him."

Next came an uneventful call to Paul Gigot, the powerful and established editorial page editor of the Journal, who had not been deeply involved in the independence agreement. Like his colleagues on "the page," he believed in the rights of the owner. He wasn't immediately thrilled about the Murdoch takeover, but he wouldn't brook any protest or hand-wringing over it from his staff. If an employee didn't appreciate being owned by Rupert Murdoch, that employee was free to quit. Free markets, free people, as the slogan of the newspaper's editorial page had it. Gigot was serious, well known, and widely respected. Still, Murdoch couldn't pronounce his name correctly. Instead of "Jhee-go," Murdoch reversed the soft and hard g's, pronouncing Gigot's last name as "Gee-jo."

After the call to Gigot, Murdoch finally called Negroponte. He hung up, that task completed. "They may as well earn their fifty grand," he said, referring to the $100,000 a year that the members of the committee were paid.

 

The press conference for the evening's Atlantic Council honorees was starting downstairs, and Murdoch was running late. "But what's it going to be? Blair going on about the world?" Murdoch laughed, relaxed and allowing himself to be candid, without false praise or modesty. Tony Blair and Murdoch were both getting awards that night. Blair would receive the Distinguished International Leader Award and Murdoch the Distinguished Business Award.

"Ah, they can wait," Murdoch said. Murdoch retied his tie, straightened his flyaway comb-over, which had begun to stand straight up, and made his way downstairs to greet Blair in the Ritz-Carlton's "green room" before the press conference. Unexpected but old allies, they shook hands warmly, patting each other's shoulders. Fred Kempe, head of the Atlantic Council and a former Journal editor, moved between them excitedly, trying to make them feel comfortable and welcome. He went over the format, prepping the two men and saying he hoped to discuss their respective speeches. "Rupert, you have some pretty strong words for Europe. I mean, 'Europe no longer has either the political will or social culture to support military engagements.' That's strong. I expect we'll get a lot of questions about that." But Murdoch's mind was elsewhere.

"I might get a local question because Obama said something about me today," he offered, almost proudly.

"What did he say?" asked Blair.

Obama, campaigning among a few dozen voters that day in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, had answered a question about media consolidation and freedom of the press by saying that voters have a right to be concerned when "Rupert Murdoch has his eyes on a lot of different media outlets."

"Oh, it was just about media consolidation, et cetera, et cetera." Murdoch shrugged dismissively. And then for his punch line: "I thought about asking him if he knew about the existence of the Internet."

Blair guffawed, his shoulders thrown back, reveling in the audacity of his old supporter. "So that's your idea of letting him down gently, eh? Really whack him!" Blair had been the object of Murdoch's attention before; he knew the power the man could wield. While Blair was still chuckling, the three men walked out of the room to greet the press.

 

Just as he had been doing the morning of his forced resignation two weeks previously, Marcus Brauchli listened that morning of the Atlantic Council dinner as the top editors at the paper discussed the day's stories. He realized he would never be there again. This part of his life was ending. After he left the paper, he would not be able to even read the Journal for weeks; it was too painful. As time passed, he saw how much his identity had been intertwined with the paper's. He had built his life around his assignments, and a reasonable chunk of his wardrobe was emblazoned with Dow Jones logos. He had called his father in Denver, a lawyer and columnist for the left-wing magazine CounterPunch, for advice as he negotiated his departure. He had no choice but to leave—the question was how he would make his exit. If neither side spoke out against the other and Marcus resigned quietly, he would walk away with upward of $6.4 million. Brauchli was due $3 million regardless of how he left Dow Jones—that sum was his regular severance as an executive of the company, plus the stock options that he had accumulated and negotiated for when he took the managing editor job. The additional $3.4 million came from his lawyer's negotiations with News Corp. The amount was a pittance for Murdoch, but enough to make Brauchli abdicate his position. He accepted Murdoch's offer to stay on as a "consultant" to the company for six months. He knew he would be attacked by fellow journalists for taking money rather than fighting Murdoch. Brauchli reasoned that to stay and fight would damage the Journal's brand. He honestly hadn't felt that Murdoch meddled in coverage. If he went to the Special Committee, what would he say? That he wanted to keep his job? He didn't feel he had a concrete complaint. No one had told him to run or not run a story. Besides, he hadn't seen an editor who had successfully gone to war with his paper's owner and won.

On his last day, Brauchli kept up appearances, as Thomson and Murdoch had perceived. Brauchli was determined to depart with dignity. He would hold his head up but he wouldn't fight, despite his critics' urging. Although most companies whisked departing executives out quickly, Brauchli played his part up to the moment of his departure, even keeping a meeting with editors Alan Murray and Almar Latour to talk about the redesign of WSJ.com, the Journal's Web site. That morning, he and Thomson exchanged quips and the usual banter, all the while knowing that Brauchli had just a few more hours at the top. Brauchli interviewed a job candidate and headed to the airport to catch a shuttle to Washington, DC.

He arrived at the Ritz, checked in, and carried his bags up to his room. He changed into his tuxedo and walked downstairs for the reception, feeling awkward to be dressed up so early. No one else was in black-tie attire at that early hour, aside from Fred Kempe's wife, who was, in effect, the hostess of the evening. He milled around awkwardly for a moment, and then almost immediately a huge crowd swelled out of the doors where Murdoch's press conference had just concluded. Rupert eyed Brauchli and walked over. "Oh, are you planning to stay over?" Murdoch asked. Yes, Brauchli replied. "Well, you should come home with us on the plane tonight instead." As the exchange concluded, a photographer snapped a picture of them together, grinning into the camera, the victor and the vanquished. Of course it had been no match at all.

Murdoch headed through the growing crowd to make his way up to the penthouse to change into his tux. He wore a modern black tie, not a bow tie, a change for a traditionalist like Murdoch, one of many since marrying Wendi. When he returned to the VIP cocktail hour downstairs, he was, as usual, stopped at almost every turn. Murdoch did not seek out people at a cocktail party. He didn't have to. Everyone came to him. Even in a crowd such as this—Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Sir Howard Stringer, José Maria Aznar—Murdoch stood out.

In previous years, the Atlantic Council's fete had drawn a few hundred attendees, but Murdoch's presence boosted the guest list. The settings had been carefully done, with white orchid centerpieces arranged atop shimmering deep blue tablecloths. Murdoch sat between Kissinger, who would present him with his award after dinner, and Jimmy Lee, his banker friend. When Murdoch asked Jimmy if JPMorgan could be a host sponsor to the event, Jimmy agreed under the condition that Murdoch underwrite Jimmy's awards ceremony later that year, at the New York Public Library.

The guests started their meal with roasted lady apple, stuffed with blue cheese mousse, on a bed of mache lettuce, pickled red onions, dried cherries, and Brie wrapped in phyllo pastry. Murdoch picked at his meal with the Ritz-Carlton—branded silver, while Jimmy Lee, in a low voice, gave him the rundown on the deal they had agreed to with Sam Zell. There was always another deal. The two were also strategizing about a possible Yahoo! tie-up. The Vidalia-onion-crusted filet arrived next, suitably rustic with pattypan squash and baby turnips. The guests' chatter grew louder as they downed their glasses of 2006 Simi Chardonnay and Steele Pinot Noir.

When Kissinger introduced Murdoch, Brauchli's BlackBerry buzzed with a call from Bill Grueskin, his deputy. He ignored it. A moment later, just as Murdoch stood to take the stage, Grueskin sent Brauchli an e-mail, and he looked at his small screen. It was a story from Time.com: "Wall Street Journal M.E. to Resign."

Wall Street Journal M.E. That was him. The real action of the evening was happening on the small screen in front of him and not on the stage where his boss was speaking. Nine hundred other people were listening to Murdoch thank Kissinger for his kind introduction. "Your words remind me of the definition of a diplomat: a man who always remembers his wife's birthday—but never remembers her age..." For Brauchli, the joke and the polite laughter were taking place in another world, one he seemed to be departing with such mixed feelings. Murdoch, not yet aware of the headline, seemed unconcerned with the havoc he was wreaking in Brauchli's career. He later explained to Brauchli that it had to happen this way, but it was a problem of physics. "Two people can't occupy the same job at the same time."

Murdoch didn't seem to notice the furious BlackBerry activity between the two tables of Journal editors at the dinner. They were hungrily anxious for news of their own future. Murdoch continued: "Today, we can be tempted to bask in our achievements—and wax nostalgic about all we have been through. But this is no time for nostalgia..."

Seated next to Brauchli was John Bussey, the intense and hard-charging Washington bureau chief of the Journal. As foreign editor, he had been Brauchli's boss for years when Brauchli was chief of the China bureau. He had made Brauchli's life miserable. It was with not a small amount of pleasure that Brauchli leapfrogged Bussey to become the managing editor of the Journal. His first instinct was to return the pain Bussey had inflicted on him. In his first (and only) major reorganization of the editing ranks, Brauchli offered Bussey a pay cut. But shortly after, he reversed himself and offered Bussey the high-profile Washington bureau chief job. Brauchli wanted to place a strong Journal person in the position, to establish "the facts on the ground," knowing that the DC bureau was about to be an object of obsession for Murdoch.

Ironic, then, that it was Bussey who turned his BlackBerry screen to Brauchli with raised eyebrows and questioning shoulders. "Is this true?"

"Wall Street Journal M.E. to Resign."

Brauchli responded only with a sheepish, evasive smile. He couldn't say anything. So he sat among his colleagues, some of whom ran in and out of the ballroom to call back to the newsroom for details of his departure, while Murdoch lectured. Bussey, a company man above all else, set aside the past differences and e-mailed the top editors in New York to tell them to stop e-mailing Brauchli, who had turned off his cell phone. The moment the last speaker left the stage, Brauchli darted out of the ballroom, eager, now that the word was out, to get away.

 

That night, after the dinner, Brauchli took Murdoch up on his offer for a ride home. Brauchli boarded the private plane, which carried Murdoch, Ginsberg, speechwriter Bill McGurn, and longtime Murdoch investment banker Stan Shuman, who had navigated Murdoch's path in the United States, helping him buy the New York Post and other properties. Murdoch, propped up on cashmere pillows, bow tie loosened, watched Bill O'Reilly from the mammoth flat-screen TV that overlooked the conference table where all his guests sat. Murdoch dipped in and out of the conversation. No one spoke a word about Brauchli's resignation. The small talk revolved around China, Passover (Ginsberg had been observing the Jewish holiday and was avoiding leavened bread), and the progress of the short flight back to New York. When Murdoch occasionally lost interest, he turned toward the television and turned the volume up so he could hear a bit better. As O'Reilly bellowed from the screen, Murdoch's guests looked at one another, sometimes smirking at the bellicose television host. Murdoch, seemingly unaware, turned away from the show to comment on it: "Has a good rhythm, doesn't it?" he said, to polite nods. Peggy, the flight attendant, distributed bottles of water and brought out small plates of almonds for the guests. Murdoch had offered everyone a drink, but there were no takers.