War at the Wall Street Journal Read Online Free Page B

never have thought to befriend someone like Jimmy, much less talk on the phone with him on a summer afternoon. For Kann, even speaking to a rogue banker about company strategy was a step outside the bounds of Bancroft-approved isolationism. Kann, who often spoke slowly, his hand rubbing the top of his balding head, which pitched ever so slightly forward when he addressed a group, had served as the company's CEO since 1991 and was a
Wall Street Journal
journalist who had risen through the ranks. At another publication, the ascent would seem unusual. But at Dow Jones, the best journalists wound up running the company, and so it had been with Kann. He was awkward in front of crowds; his presence was unassuming until he started to write. Then his prose enchanted, something his performance as an executive had never managed to do. More than any living Bancroft, Peter Kann embodied the understated spirit of Dow Jones. He once wrote in a letter to
Journal
readers: "We believe facts are facts and that they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting. We thus believe that truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral. News, in short, is not merely a matter of views. And truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder." As CEO, he had assembled a management team of polite Ivy League executives. He had also promoted his wife, Karen Elliott House, to publisher of the
Journal.
Her proud Texan twang announced her as a standout in the otherwise meek crowd. The journalists called him "Uncle Peter," sometimes affectionately, sometimes with derision.
    Kann knew Dow Jones only as a Bancroft-owned institution. He had grown close to the elders in the family and often praised their support of Dow Jones and the
Journal.
He fostered the notion that Dow Jones was a "quasi-public trust"—as was once stated in the company's proxy—and that the family was a worthy defender of one of the finest journalistic institutions in the country. He believed fervently that family ownership at Dow Jones was what gave the institution the independence to pursue its stellar brand of journalism. The best papers in the country—the
Washington Post,
the
New York Times,
and the
Journal—were
all owned by old families with a legacy to protect. During his tenure, he had assiduously established the relationships he needed to keep the company independent.
    Kann's tenure as CEO was marred by serious management missteps, capital misallocations, and a foundering stock price, but he waved off critiques of these problems. He had managed something far greater in his mind: the journalistic integrity of the
Wall Street Journal.
And even though he didn't think they were the brightest bunch, he had the Bancroft family to thank for that.
    Zannino didn't blend in at the company, where he'd arrived from the rag trade, the son of an Italian Catholic longshoreman who took occasional work at the local bar in Everett, Massachusetts, and an Irish Catholic stay-at-home mom. Married right out of Bentley College, where sometimes it seemed he'd majored in financial aid, he started a family, worked two jobs, and slaved at night for an MBA. At forty-three, he still hadn't shaken Boston's rougher precincts from his voice. Though comfortable at Dow Jones, he had never taken on the company-wide aversion to selling the place. One of his big critiques of the
Journal,
which he kept mostly to himself, was that it lacked positive stories about successful CEOs and their companies. He was a businessman. Take it or leave it.
    Jimmy and Zannino had worked together before. When Jimmy was an investment banker at Chemical Bank, Zannino was chief financial officer of Saks Fifth Avenue and later Liz Claiborne. They became Connecticut neighbors when Zannino moved to Greenwich (Jimmy lived in nearby Darien), home to hedge fund managers, CEOs, and their bankers. There he coexisted peacefully with all the other executives, and his son, Joey