The Dow Jones newswires covered the world of business at a feverish pace, competing with Reuters and Bloomberg for scoops. But the Journal had global reputation and reach. It was prominent and widely circulated; it had among the most subscriptions of any paper in the US. Murdoch, like the other people populating the Forbes list of billionaires, relied on it religiously for news about business, finance, and the regulations that could affect commerce. The Journal became the jewel in the crown of Murdoch’s media empire. He loved owning it. And yet Murdoch did not much like the Journal itself. Murdoch’s first editor at the Journal, Marcus Brauchli, had been installed less than a year before. Compact, fit, smart, with a sly smile and a deceptive wit, Brauchli had come up through the ranks at the Journal, making his mark in China and rising within the editing ranks to win the competition to replace the beloved Paul Steiger as managing editor. (The term “managing editor” for the paper’s most senior news executive was a relic, peculiar to the Journal, for the job that elsewhere would be editor in chief or executive editor.) Even before getting the top spot, Brauchli had been setting about to modernize the place, energize the paper’s digital offerings, and make a greater push globally.
