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At first glance, the Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones & Co., appear to be models of serenity. The newsroom, as newsrooms go, is surprisingly tranquil, despite a recent round of layoffs. Paul E. Steiger, the managing editor (the paper's top editorial position), listens more than he exhorts, and jokes about how boring he is. The chairman and C.E.O. of Dow Jones, Peter R. Kann, glances at his watch when he makes presentations, as if he couldn't wait to flee.
The apparent calm is misleading. Kann will be sixty-one this year, four years short of mandatory retirement, and no one knows if his successor will be a journalist, like him and like his predecessors for the past half century. Steiger, too, is sixty-one, and the competition for his job has begun. The financial health of the company is less than robust; in 2002, Dow Jones lost eight million dollars, and reduced costs by nearly a hundred and seventy-nine million dollars. More than seventeen hundred full-time employees have been let go since December, 2000—about a quarter of the workforce—and some Journal employees say that the paper lacks the energy and investigative appetite it once had. Many reporters and editors, even though they like Kann personally, think that the company might be in better financial condition if its C.E.O. were a tough businessman.
People who work at the Journal speak as if they'd been through a war, and in a way they have. Their offices, at One World Financial Center, are across the street from the site of the Twin Towers, and were almost destroyed on September 11, 2001; many operations were moved to New Jersey. (Under Steiger, the Journal's extraordinary coverage of the day won a Pulitzer.) In January, 2002, the Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan. A year after the terror attacks, the newspaper moved back to three of its seven floors, but the offices, with bare walls and empty bookshelves, have a Motel 6 feel to them.
The Journal, like two other great American newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, is controlled by a family, and there is concern that the younger generation might want to sell the company. Unlike the Washington Post Company, which has diversified, and which expects to generate more revenue from its Kaplan unit, an educational-testing and teaching service, than from the Post, Dow Jones relies on the Journal for fifty-five per cent of its revenues and, in most years, seventy per cent of its profits. And Dow Jones, with revenues of about $1.5 billion, is just half the size of the New York Times Company. The Bancroft family has owned Dow Jones since the beginning of the twentieth century, and has steadfastly spurned overtures to sell, but its resistance may be softening. "Anything is possible—you never say never," said Leslie Hill, an American Airlines pilot and one of three Bancrofts who serve on the Dow Jones board, along with a family trustee, Roy Hammer. While the family has "a lot of pride" in its journalistic property, Hill says that family members sometimes disagree about financial issues. "I hear comments that they're not happy with the company's performance."
The strengths of the Journal are obvious. Its daily circulation (1,820,600) is exceeded in the United States only by that of U.S.A. Today (2,162,454); if one adds the paper's electronic subscribers who do not subscribe to the newspaper—there are almost four hundred thousand of them—the Journal ranks No. 1. The Journal also enjoys enviable demographics. According to readership surveys, the average annual income of Journal readers is about two hundred thousand dollars—about twice that of the Times. In the mid-nineties, when other newspapers were giving away their online editions (as most still do), Kann insisted on charging for his. The gamble resulted in the Web's largest subscription site; six hundred and eighty-six thousand subscribers paid either seventy-nine dollars annually if they did not subscribe to the newspaper or thirty-nine dollars if they did. L. Gordon Crovitz, the president of electronic publishing at Dow Jones, predicts that wsj.com "could one day have more subscribers than the newspaper."
Recently, I asked Paul Steiger to imagine telling a reporter to write about his employer. What would he want answered? There are two crucial questions, Steiger responded: "Is it big enough to stand alone in a world where most competitors are much bigger?" And will the Bancroft family continue to "believe in it as an institution that is more than just an income-producing business?" Steiger himself is optimistic on both counts.
Many companies—Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Gannett, Pearson P.L.C., General Electric, Microsoft, Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, among others—have expressed interest in buying Dow Jones. (To shield the Journal from hostile takeovers, the family in 1984 submitted—and shareholders approved—a plan to issue a new, Class B stock with ten times the voting power of Class A stock. This plan would allow them to raise cash by selling Class A shares; at the same time, they would retain eighty per cent control over the new stock. The Washington Post and the Times have long employed two classes of stock.) Last year, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the Times' publisher, met in Boston with Roy Hammer, and proposed a merger of the two companies. Hammer rejected the idea. Sulzberger then wrote to him proposing that the Times acquire Dow Jones. The letter was vague on specifics but clear on intent. After informing Kann, but without consulting the board, Hammer telephoned Sulzberger to express surprise at the proposal, as he thought he'd made it plain that the company was not for sale. (Sulzberger declined to comment.)
Some members of the Bancroft family have said privately that an offer from the Washington Post Company and one of its directors, Warren Buffett, would be treated with more interest. "The Washington Post is a different animal," William Cox III, a family member who was a Dow Jones executive and now runs a hedge fund, said. "If you asked me if I had some interest, going forward, in being in business with Warren Buffett, you're damn right. He's very savvy on media investments." But Donald Graham, the chairman of the Post, insists that he has made no approaches. (The Journal and the Post already have a relationship: the international editions of the Journal began carrying Post stories early this year after the Times abruptly ended its partnership with the Post in the International Herald Tribune.) However, when I asked Graham if he would be interested in owning the Journal, he said, "Of course. So would thousands of others."
The Wall Street Journal was launched in 1882 as a business newsletter by two journalists, Charles Dow and Edward Jones. Fifteen years later, Dow Jones introduced its electronic news ticker, a wire service that today employs more than seven hundred people and has three hundred and twenty-six thousand subscribers around the world. With the death of Charles Dow, in 1902, the company was sold to its famously fat Boston correspondent, Clarence Walker Barron (who, in 1921, founded Barron's). When Barron died, in 1928, ownership passed to his stepdaughters, Jane and Martha. Jane Barron's husband, Hugh Bancroft, a Harvard Law School graduate who had worked alongside his father-in-law, took over the management of the enterprise. But five years later, at the age of fifty-four, Bancroft, who suffered from depression, killed himself. The company was left in the hands of the Journal's editor, and since then the Bancroft family has not had an active management role.
Today, the family consists of the descendants of the three children, now deceased, of Jane and Hugh Bancroft—about thirty-five adults, according to Roy Hammer. They are, among other professions, writers, investment bankers, equestrians, and philanthropists. Hammer, who is sixty-nine, is a slender man with expressive white eyebrows. Although he is not a Bancroft, he is by far the family's most powerful representative. During a four-hour conversation at lunch and then at his office, at Hemenway & Barnes, one of the oldest law firms in Boston, Hammer seemed to choose every word with great care, often taking long pauses between thoughts.
The Bancrofts have been represented by Hemenway & Barnes since the end of the Second World War, and Hammer has been their designated trustee for three decades. There is no family steering committee, but there is an annual Bancroft Family Forum, over which Hammer and his partners preside. "Every member of the Bancroft family who is eighteen years or older is invited," Hammer said. "We have a discussion about the company, about concerns they may have about the company."
Each quarter, the Bancrofts meet at Hammer's office to review their investments. A substantial part of the family's wealth is in Dow Jones stock, which pays regular dividends. (The family now owns about a quarter of the sixty-one million Class A shares and eight of ten Class B, or voting, shares. In good or bad years, Dow Jones dividends over the past five years have remained steady, at about a dollar per share.)
"The family is a factor when we discuss dividends, but not the only factor," the director Irvine O. Hockaday, Jr., a former C.E.O. of Hallmark Cards, said. Hammer explained that dividends are paid into a trust, with "the oldest living generation" getting the largest portions, which angers some younger family members. Although the Bancrofts, unlike the Sulzbergers and the Grahams, are not engaged in management, Hammer says that they have "the same sense of the public trust, of feeling the responsibility for the stewardship of their company, particularly the Wall Street Journal."
When people talk about Dow Jones, it is often noted that Peter Kann, the C.E.O., and Karen Elliott House, the publisher of the Journal, are married to each other—and that they have been with the company for a total of sixty-eight years. Kann, the son of a Rutgers University professor, always seemed to stand out; at the age of nine, he launched the Jefferson Road Snooper, a community newspaper in Princeton that sold for five cents. His mother typed the stories and served as publisher. As a teen-ager, he wrote for the Princeton Packet, a weekly owned by a fellow Princeton resident, Barney Kilgore, who became the Journal's managing editor in 1941, and is credited with transforming the paper into the well-written, broader business publication that it remains today. Kann was an eager student. At Harvard, he joined the Crimson, where Don Graham, another Crimson reporter, remembers how Peter followed a Cambridge city councilman who every year introduced legislation to pave Harvard Yard and make it a parking lot. "Kann covered it as a great show," Graham said. "Peter wrote like a dream. He saw the full humor of this Cambridge City Council vs. Harvard situation."
Back home in Princeton, Kann was invited to play touch football with Dow Jones executives. At the end of his junior year, he worked as an intern in the Journal's San Francisco bureau, and soon after graduation, in 1964, the paper hired him as a reporter in Pittsburgh. After nine months, he was transferred to Los Angeles, where, he recalls, "I kept raising my hand, saying, 'If you need someone to go to Asia.' "
In 1967, he was the first Journal reporter to take up residence in Vietnam, and his stories were noticed by, among others, Warren Phillips, the executive editor of all Dow Jones publications and a distinguished foreign correspondent himself. "The kinds of stories he was doing went beyond body counts and tried to give you a feel for the country," Phillips, who became the C.E.O. of Dow Jones in 1975, said.
In Saigon, Kann met Francesca Mayer, a Minnesota-born social worker. By 1969, Kann and Mayer had married and were living in Hong Kong, which Kann used as his base to cover Asia for the paper. Kann was there when India and Pakistan went to war in December of 1971. His editor ordered him to abandon Dhaka, but Kann cabled back, "Message unreceived." His war accounts won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
Dow Jones already published a business weekly, the Far Eastern Economic Review, in Hong Kong, and now Kann championed an Asian edition of the Journal. The first, thirty-page edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal rolled off the presses on September 1, 1976—with Kann as the editor and publisher. He hired the Journal's Tokyo bureau chief, Norman Pearlstine, as managing editor. The two became close friends; they were joined by a third editor, Seth Lipsky, who had been a colleague of Pearlstine's in the Detroit bureau and was befriended by Kann when he worked as a correspondent in Vietnam for Stars & Stripes. Lipsky, who now edits the New York Sun, says of Kann that he "made the Asian Wall Street Journal," and that his efforts "helped make the Wall Street Journal a global paper."
Phillips believed that the company had to diversify. It had made a foray in that direction when, in 1970, it acquired Ottaway Newspapers, which consisted of nine small dailies and three Sunday papers. But in 1985 Dow Jones, a traditionally cautious company, lost out when it tried to buy the Des Moines Register. In 1981, Phillips had got the company to invest eighty million dollars to buy a quarter of the nation's twelfth-largest cable system, Continental Cablevision. Five years later, Dow Jones, worried about the effect of this investment on short-term profits, sold it all. The company made three hundred and twenty million dollars—but not the estimated $2.7 billion it would have fetched had it held onto its share.
Phillips wanted to broaden his management team, and in 1979 asked Kann to move to New York to become his assistant. The following year, Kann was appointed a Dow Jones vice-president and associate publisher of the Journal. Phillips knew that he was positioning Kann as a possible successor. "From my selfish point of view, I was glad to have his help," Phillips, who is now seventy-seven, said. "From the institution's point of view, he had proved himself." Kann agreed to come, in part, he says, because his daughter, Hillary, was six and his wife, Francie, as she was called, suffered from alcoholism and depression, and "there was no effective way to treat that in Hong Kong."
Norman Pearlstine, meanwhile, was told that he had a chance to succeed Kann in Asia, but he was unwilling to spend another four years abroad. In 1978, he went to Forbes, where he spent two unhappy years. Kann brought him back to the Journal, and to this day Pearlstine thanks Kann for being "good enough to forgive my departure." In 1983, with the support of top management, Kann made Pearlstine the managing editor.
Soon, the Journal not only broadened its definition of business news but began to encourage investigative reporting and the kind of narrative writing more typically found in magazines. Pearlstine recruited a new generation of talent. He prominently displayed the work of the Washington bureau chief, Al Hunt, and his team, which included the diplomatic correspondent Karen Elliott House. Pearlstine also hired Paul Steiger, who was then the business editor of the Los Angeles Times and __had been at the Journal's San Francisco bureau, as an assistant managing editor. (Pearlstine says that when he hired Steiger he told him, "Don't come here unless you want to succeed me as managing editor.") He made Walter Mossberg, the national-security reporter, the Personal Technology columnist. Today, according to knowledgeable sources, Mossberg is the paper's highest-paid writer, earning, with bonuses, about five hundred thousand dollars a year; beginning reporters earn about forty-four thousand dollars, and senior correspondents as much as a hundred and forty thousand dollars.
Pearlstine is credited with helping to transform the Journal, but not everyone was a Pearlstine fan. When I asked Robert Bartley, the Journal's former editorial-page editor, to describe Pearlstine's legacy, Bartley, in the same calm but savage way in which he wrote editorials, carved up his former colleague: "Well, circulation was down. Advertising was down. A lot of reporters won prizes for writing books beating up on our subscribers and advertisers. Now, Norm's a very creative guy—the three-section newspaper was his. It's the kind of thing he was very good at. His job at Time"—Pearlstine is now editor-in-chief of Time Inc.'s hundred and thirty magazines—"probably suits him very well because he can jump in and shake things up and not have to run them. I don't think he's good at sustained effort."
If there were tensions between Bartley and Pearlstine, they did not intrude on the friendship between Pearlstine and Kann, who was having problems at home. Francie Kann had become a recluse and refused to accept counselling. In 1981, Kann and his daughter, then eight, moved to his mother's house in Princeton, a mile away, leaving the house to Francie. It was around this time that Kann began dating Karen Elliott House.
House, who is fifty-five, is a regal woman; she is five feet nine and has short, straight light-brown hair. Only when she speaks does one get a hint of her roots, in Matador, Texas. The town had five churches, one stoplight, and a population of nine hundred, she says, and its "only claim to fame was a gas station right by that blinking red light called Bob's Oil Well," which had a cage full of rattlesnakes. Matador had a drive-in movie theatre, but, she says, if you went to a movie on Sunday night instead of church "you were a heathen or a hypocrite." The Elliott family belonged to the Church of Christ, and her father, a welder, ruled the household. To shield the three children from outside influences, they were forbidden both television and the telephone. Her father wouldn't let Karen play basketball, because, he told her, taking a school bus was too perilous. When she thought of becoming a teacher, her father warned that the schools were full of Communists. Since she published school news in the local paper, she had an alternative: journalism.
House recalls that her mother "was the family servant for all of us. I did not want to be like my mother. I wanted to get out and do something." The one time her father relaxed his grip was when he agreed to let her attend the University of Texas. "If you don't like it, you can come home," he said, and her voice broke as she recalled this moment. Nearly four decades later, in a graduation speech at Boston University, she remembered her father this way: "I was fortunate—though I didn't think so at the time—to have a father who taught us to go alone because he wouldn't let us 'go along.' "
House's first newspaper job, which she landed in 1970, was at the Dallas Morning News, where she covered schools. She soon asked to be assigned to the Washington bureau, and in 1971 she was. Three years later, the Journal hired her, and by 1978 she was covering the State Department and travelling extensively. She also got married to Arthur House, who worked at the World Bank. In the early nineteen-eighties, Arthur went to work for Cigna and moved to Connecticut, and the marriage did not last long after that.
House first met Peter Kann in 1979, when he was introduced to the Washington bureau. They saw each other again a year or two later at a correspondent's farewell party and began dating, secretly at first. "It was a whirlwind romance," Al Hunt, who had dated Karen briefly seven years earlier and had grown close to Kann, recalls. "But she was also dating Charlie Rose. She was torn. She liked them both. And she was in the middle of a divorce." The news that House and Kann were romantically involved was not well received, Hunt says. "There was resentment when she was made diplomatic correspondent at age thirty. Karen and self-doubt have always been strangers. But, when it came to her profession, she was good."
They went public with their romance at Dow Jones's hundredth-anniversary party, in London, late in 1982. (That was also the occasion when Pearlstine, the soon-to-be managing editor, brought the woman he had been dating, Nancy Friday, whose books about sexual fantasies were best-sellers.) Francie Kann died of liver disease in 1983, and a year later House and Kann were married.
Kann's formal title was associate publisher, but he was by then the de-facto publisher. In 1984, House won a Pulitzer Prize for a series that revealed the role played by King Hussein of Jordan in advancing President Reagan's Middle East peace plan. (Seth Lipsky, who was then the foreign editor, remembers that when Hussein stopped returning House's phone calls, she called the American Ambassador to Jordan and said, "Who does the King think he is? This is the Wall Street Journal." Lipsky went on, "Within less than a minute, her phone rang and they said, 'Hold the line for His Majesty.' She knew the phones were tapped. She knew exactly what she was doing.") Kann and House were a highly visible couple in those days; Dow Jones often provided a helicopter to ferry them between New York and Princeton.
In retrospect, it seems inevitable that the friendship of Kann, House, and Pearlstine couldn't continue as it had. There were complaints that House was taking advantage of her marriage to Kann. John Huey, the editorial director of Time Inc., remembers an odd incident in 1984, when he was the managing editor of the European Wall Street Journal. He and House had assigned correspondents to cover the same story. Huey said that he called her in Maine, where she and Kann were vacationing. "You want me to staff it, or do you want to?" Huey remembers asking. Then, he recalled, "She starts screaming at me over the phone, 'John Huey, I'm not going to sit here and let you call me a liar!' "
It was, Huey says, as if "my end of the conversation was not even taking place." Afterward, he typed a note to Pearlstine, described what happened, and said, "I think it's safe to say my days are numbered here." Huey believed that House "was doing it to get me away from Peter. Anybody Peter was fond of, she drove off." Huey told me that the Journal became polarized between "Norm people" and "Karen people."
"I have no recollection of John Huey ever calling me at home," House says. "I don't spend my life undermining people with Peter Kann. He's a grownup man who can think for himself."
An unflattering 1997 article, written by Robert Sam Anson for Vanity Fair, said that House had involved Kann in the editing of her King Hussein stories—a revelation that had upset Pearlstine. (Pearlstine had nevertheless promoted her to foreign editor.) When, in 1986, House appeared on the raucous television program "The McLaughlin Group," Hunt was dismayed, because he had told his staff not to go on TV to offer opinions on subjects that they were supposed to cover impartially. (In the modern cable era, that tradition has apparently vanished.) Pearlstine was unhappy and assumed that House had ignored him and gone straight to Kann. When Hunt, House, and Pearlstine discussed it over drinks, House became so agitated that she threw a glass of wine at Pearlstine. (In an unpublished letter to Vanity Fair, __which first reported this incident, a Dow Jones spokesman cited what he said was a partial list of twenty-one "untruths" in the profile, including, "Ms. House clearly and specifically recalls that she tossed her wine on Mr. Pearlstine's shirt in 1986 after he made a sexist remark about another female Journal reporter." Hunt and Pearlstine told me that they were shocked by this claim and say that no such remark was made.)
Pearlstine insists that his relationship with Kann remained strong throughout his nine years as managing editor and that "I never felt I was being second-guessed by Peter." But he does remember that after House and Kann's frequent morning helicopter commutes he would get separate but similar memos from each with story ideas. "It was a not so subtle reminder of her influence," he says.
In 1989, Kann was invited to join the board of Dow Jones. Meanwhile, Warren Phillips and James H. Ottaway, Jr., a senior vice-president of Dow Jones, appointed House vice-president of the company's International Group, a position that gave her responsibility for all international editions of the Journal. "She organized her territory and her personnel and got things done, in my mind more effectively and more forcefully than her predecessors," Phillips said, adding that, under House, the Journal in Asia and Europe became profitable. At the same time, he acknowledged that she could be "brusque," and he added, "I got vibes that this person or that person resented her, or had a nickname for her. She had detractors. I was aware of that. But, to the best of my ability to track that down, it always came back to the fact that she did knock heads together but in my mind she did it when it needed to be done."
"People tend to describe me as 'tough,' " House told me. "I don't think I'm tough. I think I'm demanding." One longtime Journal editor who has worked with both House and Kann and finds him too nice as a businessman and her too "cold," describes their different management styles this way: if, in a meeting, House doesn't like something that is said she will simply blurt out, "That is stupid." By contrast, Kann will say, "We've got to talk about that. Let's get together later this week." Kann calls House "an idealist about the journalism profession" and someone with "a clear set of values of right and wrong."
No doubt House, like her father, tends to see the world in somewhat stark terms. At Boston University, she told the graduating class, "There are too few in our society who really have clear, individual convictions about right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and to use the words of our President—which I applaud—'good and evil.' " Of George W. Bush, she added, "The fact that he sees the world in fairly simple terms is actually a virtue."
If there was always something odd about the Kann-House-Pearlstine troika, perhaps nothing at the modern Wall Street Journal has been odder than the role of the opinion page and its onetime editor Robert Bartley. These days, Bartley is a columnist for the Journal and is listed on the masthead as Editor Emeritus. From 1972 to 2002, he ran the editorial page, and although he has the demure manner of a Midwestern tourist lost in New York, in those decades the Journal stood apart from other newspapers; it was in many ways as if Bartley owned and operated his own private newspaper. "He's one of the most significant editors of the last fifty years," Paul Gigot, the man who succeeded him, says.
Born in Marshall, Minnesota, and raised in a moderate Republican household in Iowa, Bartley served in the Army Reserve after graduating from Iowa State, earned a master's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin, and joined the Journal as a reporter in 1962. Vermont Royster, his predecessor on the editorial page, liked his intellectual brashness, and gave him some books to review; he offered him a job on the page in 1964. At the time, Bartley thought of himself as "a liberal Republican," and voted for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater. "I thought Goldwater was too extreme," he told me.
It was one of the last occasions on which Bartley would find himself that far from the right. When, over lunch one day, Phillips offered him the editorial-page job, Bartley recalled, "Warren said he wanted to keep the editorial policy we've had: 'Free markets and free men.' Those were my marching orders." And in the late seventies and early eighties his editorial page became a model of the form: witty, literate, and passionate in its eccentric causes, which in Bartley's case was a non-stop campaign on behalf of supply-side economics, a return to the gold standard, free trade, smaller government, and prosecuting the Cold War. It was also a page that often stood almost alone, as when it praised Israel in 1981 for destroying Osirak, the Iraqi nuclear plant near Baghdad. The predominantly Democratic Bancroft family sometimes complained to Phillips about the "extreme" positions that Bartley's page took on economic issues, but neither they nor Phillips intruded. Roy Hammer told me that the Bancroft family would have preferred "a less acerbic editorial voice." He went on, "On some social issues, on tax-policy issues, I certainly don't agree with the editorial board. There is a lot that I think is beyond the pale." Hammer expressed the view of many reporters inside the paper when he said that the editorial page sometimes omitted facts that contradicted its assertions, and therefore played by a different set of rules.
Phillips heard some of this criticism during a dinner for the Washington bureau in 1980. According to Jerry Rosenberg's book "Inside the Wall Street Journal: The Power and the History of Dow Jones & Company and America's Most Influential Newspaper," reporters complained that Bartley no longer ran their pieces because they usually did not conform to his conservative beliefs. Bartley, who had just learned that he had won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials, recalls that what he said to the bureau was "On a lot of issues of the day, we had better sources than they did, which they resented. I was not very discreet about it."
Reporters felt that the opinion section crossed a line in advancing its ideology, sometimes befriending those who pushed a particular agenda, or even lobbying and strategizing with them. This happened in the late seventies with Jude Wanniski, an editorial-board member, on behalf of supply-side economics; and, in the nineties, with board members such as Micah Morrison and John Fund, who met with anti-Clinton activists. A Times reporter once asked Bartley whether his page would have supported or attacked House Speaker Newt Gingrich or some other staunch conservative if he had been charged with sexual misconduct, as Bill Clinton was. "Yeah, we would have defended them," Bartley said. "That's the way it is."
In the Clinton era, the tone of Bartley's page became more shrill. A federal judge was characterized as "Osama's Favorite Judge," and Tom Daschle, then the Democratic Majority Leader, was "the Senate's most accomplished holdup man." Bartley treated Whitewater as if it were Watergate, devoting to it what turned out to be more than three thousand pages of editorial and op-ed columns, which were later anthologized in six volumes. The page attacked deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, who killed himself not long after an editorial appeared with the headline "who is vincent foster?" He left a note blaming Washington for making "sport" out of politics and singling out the Journal: "The WSJ editors lie without consequence." After the suicide, a Bartley editorial called for a special counsel to investigate Foster's death as a possible murder, and the last sentence read, "If he was driven to take his life by purely personal despair, a serious investigation should share this conclusion so that he can be appropriately mourned." When, over lunch, I asked Bartley to describe his biggest mistakes in thirty years as editor, he had one answer: "The first editorial after Vince Foster's death. I'd like to rewrite the last sentence." What he would have liked to say was "Maybe his memory could do for depression what Betty Ford did for alcoholism."
People often speculated that Kann did not support Bartley's opinions. In fact, Kann's affability has little to do with his unyielding view of the world. "I don't think there's any position of major consequence that the editorial page has taken over the years that I would not be a believer in," he said. House, for her part, said, "Our editorial positions are already well known. You don't have to ask are we for or against the war. We're basically a free-market, free-people—if you will, 'America first, capitalism best'—kind of editorial page."
Kann, like House, implicitly acknowledges that Bartley reported to no one. And what if Kann had not been a believer in Bartley's editorials? "I hope I would still have the good sense not to try and impose my view on the editorial page," he said.
By the late eighties, the distance between Kann and Pearlstine had widened. They no longer socialized. "It's one of the saddest things for me that Peter and Norman's relations became strained," Al Hunt said. After Kann was made publisher of the Journal and chief operating officer of the company, in 1989, Pearlstine wanted to try new magazine ventures. But the conservative, debt-averse culture of Dow Jones resisted. In partnership with Hearst, the company did start a personal-business magazine, SmartMoney, but Pearlstine at first believed that Dow Jones should have done it alone. He was unhappy to cede control of the Asian and European Journals, which became part of House's international division. And he pushed the company to acquire the Financial News Network, and was disappointed when, in 1991, after Kann was chosen to succeed Phillips as C.E.O., Kann failed to secure the deal and pulled out of the bidding. (FNN was eventually bought by G.E.'s CNBC, for about a hundred and forty-five million dollars.)
In 1992, Pearlstine decided to leave. At his farewell party, colleagues crowded into a Dow Jones conference room. Pearlstine might have made a speech in which he boasted of his achievements. Instead, he said, "I'm going to be remembered as the managing editor who brought Paul Steiger back to the Wall Street Journal—and groomed him to be his successor."
Some colleagues took more notice of another gesture. As Peter Kann and Karen Elliott House looked on, Pearlstine awkwardly handed Steiger a package that he said was "a Wall Street Journal tradition." The audience watched as Steiger opened the package, which contained a two-and-a-half-foot-tall papier-mâché dog with a copy of the Journal in its teeth. It was the same dog, as almost everyone there knew, that Kann and House had given Pearlstine at his wedding, in 1988. "It was a rebuke," according to a reporter who knew that Pearlstine was publicly returning the wedding gift.
Paul Steiger is now the longest-serving managing editor in the Journal's century-old life. Steiger, who was born in the Bronx (his father was a C.P.A.), once planned to become an economist. But after attending graduate school at Yale he turned instead to journalism.
The contrasts between Pearlstine and Steiger are vivid. Pearlstine strides into a room; Steiger has a slight limp from childhood polio. Pearlstine has many friends; Steiger says that his only intimate friend is Byron E. (Barney) Calame, the son of a fundamentalist Missouri preacher who worked with him in California and later went to New York, __where he is now a deputy managing editor at the Journal. Pearlstine says that the Journal is a better paper under Steiger. Kann says of Steiger, "He manages people because they respect him, not because they're afraid of him. He listens to alternate arguments. He welcomes criticism."
During the nineties, the newspaper thrived, but the company itself had a turbulent time. The $1.6-billion acquisition, in the late eighties, of Telerate, an electronic provider of financial information, which had seemed to be a perfect fit between Dow Jones's expertise in gathering news and Telerate's in delivering it to subscribers, turned into what Kann calls "the biggest business problem I had to face." Competitors like Bloomberg L.P. and Reuters Holdings P.L.C. were spending freely to upgrade their databases and their analytic capability; Dow Jones tried to keep costs down and was quickly left behind.
By 1997, Kann says, "we knew we had to invest or get out." In January, Dow Jones announced that Kann and the board of directors had unanimously approved a proposal to spend six hundred and fifty million dollars over the next three to four years to jump-start Telerate. "No one is satisfied with where we are in the business today, but we are confident that we can change that," Kann said at the time.
A month later, Fortune, which had been energized by its then managing editor, John Huey, and was overseen by Norman Pearlstine, published a devastating story about Dow Jones and Telerate. After the Fortune article, written by Joseph Nocera, Roy Hammer urged the board to add more independent directors—a process that Hammer says had begun before the article appeared. Hammer himself joined the board in 1998, aware that board membership posed a potential conflict between his legal responsibilities to the family and his fiduciary responsibilities to all the shareholders. But after "the Telerate fiasco," Hammer explains, he learned that "standing apart from the decision-making process at the company was not fulfilling our fiduciary responsibility to the family."
In the wake of Telerate, Dow Jones became the object of takeover maneuvers. Two investors, Michael F. Price and James J. Cramer, demanded that the company do something about Telerate, which caused speculation that they might also attempt a takeover. At around this time, Gannett and other media companies, such as NBC, tried to find out if the Journal was for sale. It wasn't. The plan to invest several hundred million dollars in Telerate was abandoned—and so, ultimately, was Telerate. In 1998, Dow Jones sold it to Bridge Information Systems for a third of what it had cost. But, even after that, Telerate did not go away. Bridge filed for bankruptcy in February, 2001, leaving Dow Jones the target of continuing creditor lawsuits.
Because of Telerate, the company posted a loss of eight hundred and two million dollars in 1997; in 1998, its profits barely topped eight million. Telerate became a financial straitjacket, denying the company resources that it might have used for other investments. Costs were cut, including, eventually, the helicopter sometimes used by Kann and House. By 1999, though, the outlook was brightening; Dow Jones's earnings were expanding by ten per cent; the Journal was so thick with ads from the booming tech and financial sectors that it needed to add a fourth section in order to display them. Kann's decision to charge for the online Journal and to jointly invest with Reuters in an electronic news-library retrieval service (now called Factiva) was vindicated. "This is a much more pleasant year to be C.E.O. of Dow Jones," Kann told a reporter at the time.
But the good times didn't last. First, the Internet bubble burst, and then the financial sector collapsed, followed by an American—and ultimately global—economic recession. All this was accompanied by the shock of the September 11th attacks. It was like getting hit by "the perfect storm," Paul Steiger said. Most publications lost advertising, but few suffered as severely as the Journal. One of its strengths has been that it is a national publication with an élite business audience. (Only seventeen per cent of Journal readers read the Times, according to House.) But much of the Journal's advertising is what is known as business-to-business ads, such as I.B.M. touting its business-information systems. And about half of the paper's advertising has come from just two sectors, technology and financial services, which were the hardest hit by the recession.
Despite such dismal news, Kann did something that most C.E.O.s preoccupied with projecting quarterly profit growth would not have done—he invested more in the newspaper. He approved the spending of two hundred and fifty million dollars to retrofit the Journal's printing plants and tripled color capacity in the paper, adding up to sixteen pages of news and columns in a new, thrice-weekly Personal Journal section. These changes were introduced in April, 2002. "There are a lot of ways to judge a C.E.O.," Kann says. "One of them, fairly, can be the share price. On the other hand, if you're trying to run a company like this, and part of your role is to enhance what the company does best, then I think I have at least helped create an environment where a content company produces great content."
Kann and the board made two important management changes. The first was the hiring, in 2001, of Richard Zannino, a former Liz Claiborne executive, as chief financial officer, and then promoting him to chief operating officer of the company. The second involved House's promotion, in 2002, after thirteen years of running the international division, to publisher and senior vice-president of Dow Jones. At Kann's suggestion, she reports to Zannino rather than to him. Zannino believes that the company needs to be less dependent on the fluctuating profits generated by the Journal; House believes that the Journal itself needs to find new sources of income—such as attracting more female readers (women compose only one-fifth of Journal subscribers), more consumer advertising, and possibly adding a Saturday edition. __Last spring, in a move intended to galvanize the sales force, House fired the senior vice-president for sales and marketing, who had recently been hired, and installed a senior Dow Jones executive, Scott D. Schulman, a former Booz Allen management consultant. To her supporters, House's actions were decisive; to her critics, these moves showed managerial panic, prompting one to say that she had crossed "the fine line between urgency and anxiety."
Kann is acutely aware of the negative feelings about his wife. "A certain amount of it you just let pass," he said, seated at a small conference table beside his desk, flanked by pictures of his daughter, Hillary, who is now thirty and married, and the three children, two of them Korean-born, that he and House adopted. He is aware that he is a target, too. He likes to cook and be home with the kids. "The joke is that Peter sits at home and plans dinner, and Karen goes off and settles the Cold War," Seth Lipsky said. "It's a good joke, but it doesn't pan out. In any circle he's in, he's the senior figure."
Kann says he is untroubled by what might be seen as a form of reverse sexism. "I think you care about what people you care about think," he said. "You can't care about what everyone thinks." Of nepotism concerns, he went on, "You try to insure that neither individual gets any preference. But the flip side of that is that neither is punished because of the relationship. In that context, I'd argue that Karen might well, logically, have gotten further sooner had she not been married to me."
The Journal's newsroom has its own debates, which came to the surface in June at a two-day retreat for editors and bureau chiefs. Much of what was said was familiar: Should page 1 be a home for feature stories or for breaking news? Was the "softer" news of the Personal Journal section taking space away from serious news? Some worried that the company hadn't done enough after the murder of Daniel Pearl—either in investigating the killing or in helping his wife, Mariane. Last week, in an interview with the Washington Post, she __criticized the Journal, and said that she had been reimbursed for only ten thousand dollars of a seventy-thousand-dollar legal bill. (Steiger told me, "We continue to seek every opportunity to get and publish a full explanation of what happened." A senior Dow Jones executive, while speaking admiringly of Mariane Pearl, said that she had rejected two Pakistani criminal lawyers the company had found for her, whose fees would not have exceeded nine thousand dollars. Mariane Pearl has received about a million dollars in contributions from Dow Jones and other individual and corporate donors.)
Then there was the moment when Karen Elliott House cried. At dinner, House spoke, as she had at Boston University, about the importance of independence, of reporters avoiding the press pack. Then she talked about her pride in the newspaper, and her voice broke and tears filled her eyes. "We all looked at her and were befuddled, and silently pleaded, 'Don't cry, girl!' " one female editor recalled. Others remembered that she had cried during the newsroom announcement last spring that the Journal had won a Pulitzer. It's a meaningless tic, Paul Steiger insists. "It's like she scratched her ear," he says. "She doesn't lose focus." (House cried on nine occasions during our two interviews. Once, she was describing Steiger, and when I asked why she was crying she struggled to regain her composure and said, "Partly it's because Steiger is a nice guy." Then she choked up again.)
There's one question that did not come up at the retreat but that does in almost every extended conversation with a reporter or editor: Is Dow Jones mismanaged? "While we think this is a great place to be a reporter, the company's actions more and more suggest that we are replaceable and the bottom line is more important than our welfare," Tom Lauricella, a reporter who joined the company in 1992, told me. Lauricella, like other employees, is angry that salaries at the newspaper have been frozen. Ultimately, the question of mismanagement leads back to Kann and his performance. Data compiled by Bloomberg reveal that between the end of July, 1992, the year after Kann became C.E.O., and July, 2003, Dow Jones stock had a total return of 57.3 per cent. In this same eleven-year period, the total return of the S. & P. 500 Publishing and Printing Index, consisting of Dow Jones's media peers, rose more than five times as much. A writer at the Journal who attended the Kann-House wedding confesses ambivalence: he thinks that the company could be better run, but that if it were "run by the best managers, who are preoccupied with the bottom line, the journalism would suffer." This person worries about the company's inability to diversify, and blames a cautious corporate culture: "I don't know why the New York Times bought the Boston Globe without us bidding on that. Or why Belo bought the Providence Journal without us bidding on that. We know newspapers."
Kann appears to have the continued support of most of the directors. James Ottaway, who recently retired as C.E.O. of the Ottaway Newspapers division but remains a director, calls Kann "a visionary leader" who had the "courage during the last two years of recession" to "take the longer view" and invest to improve the Journal and to buy additional community newspapers.
"Given the nature of the institution and the business, I don't know who could have done a better job," Irvine Hockaday, who chairs the board's powerful compensation committee and oversees the annual evaluation of Kann, said. "You could have gone in there and you could have done your cuts, your aggressive cost-management steps, in anticipation of an inevitable downturn, so that you get ahead of the curve. Long-term, that would have been a mistake. If you set aside the Telerate situation, given the cyclical nature of the business—the breadth and depth of this economic patch we've been in, the very real interruption for Dow Jones of 9/11, to some extent the Danny Pearl situation, and the steep economic decline in the financial and technology sector, which are revenue pillars—I certainly don't think this company has been mismanaged or undermanaged. I think this is a company that's been sensitively managed."
Hockaday also said, referring to Kann, "The compensation committee is concerned because we don't want him falling behind the market." Kann refused to accept a bonus last year, because he says it would have been unseemly for him receive it while employees were being fired. Last year, Kann earned a salary of nine hundred and thirty thousand dollars. (House earned a salary of five hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars, including a bonus that she accepted.) Hockaday went on, "Now, I will also say I think Peter by background is a journalist. I believe he's learned a hell of a lot about the difference between a journalist and a C.E.O. I think he's learned you have to make tough decisions."
When I asked Kann to assess his own performance, he reddened, and said, "I think if you judge a C.E.O. entirely on corporate bottom-line performance, and there is a reasonable argument that that is the way any C.E.O. should be judged, then there will be periods I look pretty good and there will be periods I wouldn't, and this would be one of them." But, he continued, "if you want to put a high premium on things like 'quality' and editorial and business 'integrity' and a sense of 'independence,' and you want to judge how a C.E.O. lives up to those responsibilities even in a difficult business environment—then I think I probably stack up pretty well."
He gets a more mixed judgment from some Bancroft family members, including Leslie Hill, who said, "It's not been perfect," and added, "He has strengths and weaknesses. Over all, it's a net positive." A less positive evaluation comes from Norman Pearlstine, who says that in the years since he left the Journal he has never commented publicly about Dow Jones. Now, when he was asked what grade he would give Kann as a C.E.O., he said, "I think the stock price speaks for itself, as it does here and elsewhere." Of House, he said, "If you asked me whether she would be in this job were she not married to him, I think the answer would be no." Pearlstine went on to say that benign family control subverts Dow Jones as a business: "I don't think you have the kind of meritocracy on the business side that creates superior performance."
Pearlstine concedes that family ownership of the Times, the Washington Post, and the Journal helps to explain their greatness as newspapers. But he believes that there is an accompanying risk with family control—that a weak business will eventually weaken the journalism. "I guess what I'm saying," Pearlstine went on, "is that if you have a meeting with Peter Kann and Karen and you really talk to them, you as a journalist would see them as worldly people, engaged with issues. But my guess is it's easier to talk with them about Iraq than about the outlook for newsprint prices."
Donald Graham praised the Journal's family ownership, while acknowledging that "many of the worst newspapers in the U.S." are family-owned. "I don't know any members of the Bancroft family, but the Bancroft family ought to take a bow," Graham said, and added, "One of the things you have to grade Peter Kann on is whom he's chosen as editor."
A Bancroft family board member says that choosing Kann's eventual successor is "the biggest issue the board will wrestle with this year." Hockaday calls it "a topic the whole board discusses several times a year. We sit with Peter and get him to describe the attributes he thinks are the most important for a C.E.O. We talk about how to reorganize to give each executive with talent the ability to express himself. We talk about how to get more exposure to Richard Zannino, Gordon Crovitz, and Karen Elliott House." Those are the three executives who are most often discussed, he says, "but there are other young people whom we don't write off."
If the board is determined to follow tradition and pick a journalist, the choice probably narrows to House or Crovitz, who runs the company's electronic publishing. The conventional wisdom in the newsroom is expressed by Al Hunt: "If you look at this institution, this company always promotes from within and always picks someone with some news background." The board also knows that, in the current economic climate, it is too early to judge House's performance as publisher. Crovitz, who is forty-five, is a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School graduate who served as editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and spent eleven of his twenty-two years at the company working for the editorial page and writing a law column. Yet Crovitz's newsroom experience (five years) was all overseas, and some fellow-executives say that he is indecisive.
House turns fifty-six in December. "I would say by age it's not logical," Kann said of the chances of his spouse succeeding him. "I would also say that I don't think she aspires to that. And I think she is particularly well credentialled for the job she's in." When House was asked if she would like to be C.E.O., she pondered the question and echoed her husband, but did not rule it out: "It's not a decision for me to make. And, if you look at the math, it's not a decision anyone else is likely to make on me. I don't represent a generational change."
If the board chooses a nonjournalist, the leading contender would probably be Zannino, the chief operating officer, who is forty-five. Scott Schulman, the head of sales and marketing, who has been with the company four years and has run several divisions, is also mentioned. Zannino is competent and dynamic, but, as one senior executive says of him, "He's a finance guy. He doesn't understand, in his genetic material, what journalism is about." When Zannino decided not to reopen the cafeteria in One World Financial Center, he looked at the savings, not at the less quantifiable costs of lowered morale and lost contact between managers and reporters who shared the same lunch tables.
There is also the possibility that when advertising perks up—as it did for the first time in three years in the third quarter, rising seven per cent from July through September and twenty-nine per cent in September—Kann might step down early, clearing a path for House to become the chair of Dow Jones while remaining as publisher. Zannino could then become C.E.O.—which would give each a promotion. This assumes that House and Zannino could work as a team. Something similar happened at the Times when Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., was named chairman and publisher and Russell Lewis was anointed C.E.O.
Steiger's successor is of less immediate interest to the board, but these changes are certainly tied to each other. The candidates for Steiger's job, which last year paid him a total of eight hundred and forty-four thousand dollars, including a bonus that he accepted, will not be Barney Calame, who is sixty-four, and is unlikely to be Daniel Hertzberg, a deputy managing editor and Pulitzer Prize winner, who will be sixty-one in four years. Insiders predict that the choice will likely be made from among three people: Joanne Lipman, a deputy managing editor who edits the Weekend Journal and oversees the Personal Journal section; Stephen Adler, who is the editorial director of the online Journal (and also a deputy managing editor); and Marcus Brauchli, the just promoted global news editor. Brauchli has been a correspondent in Europe and Asia for the paper, and has worked closely with House. "He is a rocket," one senior editor said, marvelling at Brauchli's ascent within the newsroom.
Beyond all this, Dow Jones's directors know that the heart of the company's weakness is its reliance on a single division, the Wall Street Journal. While the trend among media companies is to get bigger, Dow Jones is smaller today than it was a decade ago.
Roy Hammer acknowledged that Dow Jones is a relatively "tiny" company, and spoke about the potential perils of seeking bigness. "To jeopardize the value of what we have in order to be larger—I just don't see any long-term advantage there," he said. "One can assume that Rupert Murdoch would love to own the Wall Street Journal. __What is in it for the Wall Street Journal? If you set the premise that it's impossible to compete with giants, then the only real alternative is to combine with one of the giants. And if you do that you've lost your independence.
"To me," Hammer went on, "the idea is to have the family sufficiently diversified that they are less dependent on the Wall Street Journal for their income and their resources, but they have a sufficient continuing stake in the company to maintain this sense of stewardship and responsibility." He added, "We have considered various ways of becoming larger. Most of them dilute what makes the Wall Street Journal the publication that it is. . . . If we had five times the capital that we now have, and we remained independent and could expand the scope and reach of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, it would be great to have that additional capital. We could put it to good use."
What if a large company wanted to own the Journal and made assurances that it would not alter it? "We have had expressions of interest from other papers, from publishing companies who say, 'Why don't we combine and have more size? You'll run your side of things and we'll run our side of it,' " he replied. "Well, what's the point of it? Where's the economies of scale if we're simply taking two companies and combining them as if they were not combined? And when you get into the details there's always a rub—either branding or editorial independence. . . . If the Bancroft family was driven by a desire to increase their wealth, they could always just sell out. Why did they stay with Dow Jones, which is a mature company in a business with limited opportunities, rather than just buying a portfolio of Microsoft and you-name-the-business?"
Because so much is in play—and because some members of the family appear restless—there remains a real possibility that Dow Jones will be sold. There are several forms that a sale could take. If family members wanted to sell their Class A and Class B shares to a friendly party—perhaps the family-controlled Washington Post—they are, like any other shareholder, free to do so. If they swap their shares for stock in the acquiring company, it would be a tax-free transaction. But, if the Bancrofts decided to sell the roughly forty per cent of the company they own, the sale could become an invitation for a public auction—and a hostile takeover. The law is sufficiently murky about whether a company's directors must use the highest dollar bid or can choose other, more subjective grounds. Three family representatives and one outside director say that the Bancrofts and the board would not automatically spurn a sale if the right company came along with the right offer. One family member who worries that the company may be too small said, "The family has to look at what is best for the company."
Usually, companies that have expressed an interest in acquiring or merging with Dow Jones first approach Kann; sometimes they go to Hammer. In either case, the two speak and, a source close to the Bancrofts says, decide whether "the family would be interested enough to take it to the board." This is what happened when Sulzberger made what Kann calls his "soft proposal" to acquire Dow Jones. (One reason that the Washington Post is more attractive to some Dow Jones directors is that the Post shares few of the Journal's readers or advertisers.) In the case of the Sulzberger offer, Hammer did not consult the board. "Once the controlling shareholder"—the family—"says they're not interested, what's the sense of having a long discussion?" Kann said.
Not everyone agrees with that view. As one independent director told me, "There are some of us on the board who understand that if the controlling shareholder is not interested it is hard to do. But I have never felt it was that simple." Sometimes, this director admits, tension between the family and outside directors surfaces, as it did over the quick rejection of the Times' __overture. With such issues as "board accountability" in the news, some Dow Jones directors were annoyed not to be consulted first. Roy Hammer, this director believes, is naïve, because he doesn't appreciate that he is expected to wear two hats, as a director and as a family trustee. But what if the board wanted to pursue a merger that the Bancrofts opposed? Leaving no doubt who's finally in charge, one family intimate said, matter-of-factly, "The family would replace the board." ♦


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Who Could Star in STAR WARS: UNDERWORLD TV Series?
While doing press for the historical action picture Red Tails, LucasFilm producer Rick McCallum 'let slip' a few details about what might become the highly anticipated live-action Star Wars television series. Purported to take place in the interim between the Prequels and the Original Trilogy, it is currently in development under the title Star Wars: Underworld and will deal with the shady world of organized crime, bounty hunters and smugglers that have always existed in the Star Wars universe behind the saga of the Jedi.
Apparently it is only the 'Hollywood-level' budget of each episode (5 million each, due to the desire for full CG characters) that is at this point keeping the show from being made despite McCallum's assurance that "fifty unbelievable scripts" have already been written.
The casual Star Wars fan, if there is such a thing, might think that if you take away the flashy, Force-using franchise headliners, there wouldn't be anyone left to star in the show, however those with deeper understanding of the galaxy far, far away know that is far from the truth. The films, the Clone Wars animated series and the nearly endless amount of books and comics in the 'expanded universe' have created a significant population of 'underworld' characters alive at the time Luke Skywalker was growing up on Tatooine.
We've somehow managed to whittle a seemingly endless list down to the ten we'd like to see.
Name: Han Solo
First Appearance: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
The consummate scoundrel with a heart of gold, Han Solo's appeal is literally universal. With his partner Chewbacca and his ramshackle but capable ship the Millennium Falcon, he was roped into his role as Hero of the Rebellion in order to pay his debts to those who were obstinately his criminal allies. His struggles with his criminal past run parallel to all of the action in the Original Trilogy, from escaping Mos Eisley by killing Greedo, being tracked by Boba Fett to Cloud City and putting the other heroes of the rebellion in mortal danger to save him from Jabba the Hutt.
Some of the earliest Expanded Universe material deals with Han Solo's activities before the events of Episode IV, dating as far back as the 1979 novel Han Solo at Stars' End, so the further adventures of a young Han during the height of his swashbuckling smuggler days would no doubt be compelling and entertaining. The story of his dismissal from the Imperial Navy for saving the life of Chewbacca would make for an especially good pilot movie.
Name: Jabba the Hutt
First Appearance: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
The adjective 'vile' has rarely been better applied then it was to Jabba the Hutt, not only was he basically a giant slug, but also an unrepentant criminal with a taste for killing, drug trafficking and slaving. His appetites bestowed upon him a self-centeredness and desire for revenge against Han Solo that not only almost changed the course of galactic history but ultimately cost him his life.
Fans of the Clone Wars TV series have seen how Jabba's (and the other Hutts) actions in his role as a major crime figure intersect with the events of the War, so much so that several episodes hinge on the fear by both sides of the influence that he could have on the outcome of the war. In Star Wars: Underworld, Jabba and his iconic lair could become the core set of a Deadwood-style series with various people with various sinister motives coming and going, all with Jabba in the Al Swearengen role.
Name: Boba Fett
First Appearance: The Star Wars Holiday Special
Born a clone of bounty hunter Jango Fett, Boba himself became a bounty hunter for some note, one worthy of assignments from figures as powerful as Darth Vader himself. Alone he accomplished what the entire Empire could not: finding and tracking the Millennium Falcon to Bespin and capturing its crew. Since then he's been the star of several novels and comics, made guest appearances in video games, and his Mandelorian armor has spawned an entire culture, both in the universe of the stories and in the real world.
Star Wars: Underworld could do worse than a character that has developed a large and fervent fan base to be its star. Star Wars fans would definitely tune in week after week as the anti-heroic Fett traveled the galaxy tracking down his prey. This could also open up guest appearances by other slightly less-famous bounty hunters like Bossk and IG-88, along with many of the other members of this list.
Name: Dash Rendar
First Appearance: Shadows of the Empire
While Han Solo was encased in carbonite, Dash Rendar swept in to fill the role of swaggering outlaw among the rebel heroes. With his own fast ship for smuggling and inhuman partner (this one is a robot), he joined Luke and Leia as they fought the Black Sun criminal organization before the start of Episode VI. Again, like Han, he is an ace pilot and gunfighter with a deeply buried streak of nobility.
His similarity to Han would both be a benefit and a determent to being the lead character in a Star Wars television series. Dash brings all of the assets of Han: the ship, the unusual partner, the adventuresome spirit and that famous heart of gold. But while clearly being a pale shadow of the iconic Solo, Dash remains more a cipher personality-wise, which would allow the series' writers to take more risks with the character without stepping on Harrison Ford's classic performance.
Name: Prince Xizor
First Appearance: Shadows of the Empire
A mirror of Jabba the Hutt, Prince Xizor is the Lex Luthor of the Star Wars universe: overtly conveying an air of class, influence and sophistication all the while commanding a vast criminal enterprise known as the Black Sun. During the events of Shadows of the Empire he attempted to usurp the position of Darth Vader as the Emperor's right hand himself by killing Luke Skywalker and disgracing the Sith Lord.
If Jabba would be Deadwood's Al Swearengen, Xizor would be Al Capone, an (a-hem) untouchable crime boss figure always staying one step ahead of not only the law, in this case corrupt Imperials, but deadly rivals looking to take his place. And instead of a dark den on a dusty planet, Xizor's empire would be run from gleaming, decadent palaces befitting a 'man' of his stature. Also his top enforcer is a beautiful blond gynoid named Guri, an obvious draw for crossover viewers.
Name: Sebulba
First Appearance: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Ruthless podracing champion Sebulba would do anything to win, even sabotage the racing pod of an eight year old boy. His cruelty extended outside the race track: he was known to own several slaves and engaged in the slave trade himself. Despite his loss in the Boonta Eve Classic, Sebulba still went on to a long and successful racing career.
The world of high-stakes podracing could be an excellent framing device for a Star Wars series, allowing the action to move from planet to planet and always having an action set piece to fall back on. Sebulba would provide good continuity to the film series, but racers of all stripes could become regular characters, living and perhaps dying in pursuit of fortune and glory.
Name: Dexstar Jettster
First Appearance: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
The Besalisk cook and owner of Dex's Diner on Coruscant was the unlikely source of information that Obi-Wan Kenobi used to track down the source of a dart weapon that somehow was missing from the vast databases on the Republic Capital world. Dexstar's knowledge apparently come from a long life filled with colorful experiences on both sides of the law.
If Dexstar manages to survive the transformation of Coruscant to the seat of power for the xenophobic Empire, likely because of the quality of his food and information, it could be the setting for risky espionage or smuggling action right under the Emperor's nose.
Name: Mara Jade
First Appearance: Star Wars: Heir to the Empire
In the interregnum period, Mara Jade was trained by the Emperor himself to act as his "hand," dishing out his brand of justice to both Rebels and rogue Imperials where the overt tactics of Darth Vader or the Imperial Military would be imprudent.
Another candidate for an anti-heroic series lead, Mara would have the advantage of having the Force as her ally, albeit one tainted heavily by the Dark Side. Smart and talented, she would also be comparatively young, giving her a hint of naiveté that recalls the early seasons of the espionage drama Alias starring Jennifer Gardiner, right down to her working for a sinister organization that she might not fully comprehend. The concept of the Emperor's Hands, Eyes, Reach, and Voice is one of the least-explored in the Star Wars world, and holds a lot of potential for exploration.
Name: Wedge Antilles
First Appearance: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
The consummate professional solider Wedge Antilles was the Rebellion's greatest fighter pilot, surviving countless campaigns including the destruction of both Death Stars and leading Rogue Squadron on missions to keep the peace after the death of the Emperor. A practical man in a universe of the fantastic, Wedge has no qualms about killing for a cause he believes in and leading his pilots into battle, but he also carries those deaths with him in the form of survivor's guilt.
Wedge's life changed forever when his parents were killed by pirates after they damaged his families' orbital refueling depot on his eighteenth birthday. Wedge took justice in his own hands, hunted the pirates down and killed them in deep space. After that he tried to settle down into life in cargo transport, but continued witnessing of Imperial atrocities led him to join the Rebellion. As a cult favorite character, Wedge's adventures as perhaps a mercenary space pilot would have the fans of the space battles in the recent Battlestar Galactica series tuned in week after week. Plus maybe we'll see a young, svelte Porkins!
Name: C-3PO and R2-D2
First Appearance: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
The iconic droid pair has been established as being inseparable, not only from each other, but from the canon Star Wars entries themselves. Appearing in all six movies and the Clone Wars animated series as well as countless games, comics, and novels, C-3PO and R2-D2 are there to provide (respectively) comic relief and 'droid ex machina' plot resolutions whenever they are needed.
That's right, a darker and edgier version of the only broadcast material covering that era of Star Wars history: the 1985 Droids animated series. There is an entire generation of Star Wars fans who would watch that in a heartbeat. Fans would also learn perhaps more about Artoo's past, about their previous owner Captain Antilles, how they came into the hand of Princess Leia, and circumstances around the formation of the Rebellion only lightly touched upon in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

subset: commoncrawl


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Drake Shades Rihanna With Devil Imagery During Toronto Concert [VIDEO]by Mandi Salerno | PopCrush
Some couples end on good terms, and some end with one partner calling the other the devil. Er, what?
Drake apparently didn't remain friends with his on-again, off-again ex-girlfriend Rihanna, considering he compared her to the devil during a performance of 'Days in the East' at the OVO Fest in Toronto last night (Aug. 4). The stage's backdrop flashed a blazing red "6," followed by a flaming image of Rihanna's face, then another "6," Rihanna again and finally one more "6." ("666" is often associated with Satan, Lucifer, the antichrist, the devil — whatever you want to link it to, it's not good.)
The two stars were spotted together as recently as this spring, so some serious ish must've gone down between then and now for Drake to be referring to Rihanna as an evil entity.
The singer — somewhat surprisingly, since she usually sticks up for herself — hasn't publicly commented on the diss yet, even after Drake posted a photo of himself on stage in front of a fiery "6" with the caption, "All I Know." It has only been a day, though… We'll give it some time!
See Rihanna + More Stars Without Makeup


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More Property Rights Shenanigans on the West Coast
Cato recently filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review a Ninth Circuit decision that tramples on property rights. (See also this oped I co-authored with co-counsel.)
Well, tomorrow the Ninth Circuit hears another case involving property rights violations, and this time the plaintiffs, in exchange for a building permit, were forced to give up their right to vote. Arguing for the beleaguered property-owners will be none other than Cato adjunct scholar Tim Sandefur. You can read more about the case in Tim's own blogpost on PLF's site.
Here's the basic principle with these cases: just as the government can't take your property (for public use) without just compensation, it can't attach arbitrary regulations and fees. After all, if you own an acre of land and the government tells you you can't do anything on it -- be it run around or drain puddles or build -- it might as well have "taken" it by eminent domain. And if it says you can do these things only if you give up some other entitlement you have -- not necessarily money, but, say, the right to put up signs criticizing the local government -- it has imposed an unconstitutional condition on your enjoyment of your property.


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Hostettler the Viking Needs a New Ship…And Your Help.
My good friend Justin Hostettler Davies (Blog @DBExpertise) pinged me a mail in the middle of last week saying that he entered Idera's SQL Cruise contest. He asked me to have a read of his entry and let him know what I thought. You can read Justin's entry here http://sqlserverperformance.idera.com/forums/showthread.php?22-Hostettler-amp-the-Bottleneckers.
It's a pretty cool story about Hostettler the Viking, that I think may have legs as a cartoon in it's own right. For now, I think Justin would appreciate it if you would have a read of his story and perhaps leave a comment if you like it. I know he would enjoy the Alaskan cruise and the SQL training that goes with it…
Please do give JHD your feedback over on http://sqlserverperformance.idera.com/forums/showthread.php?22-Hostettler-amp-the-Bottleneckers you might actually help the Viking get on the (SQL Cruise) ship too.
Just as an aside, Justin's story is in several parts as he has expanded on the story over the week, so please have a look through the posts


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Stored Wordpress Theme - Rating, Reviews, Preview, Demo & Download
Theme Description
Ecommerce the WordPress Way
Stored is built to make use of the Cart66 ecommerce plugin, making your WordPress install an awesome looking store. Stored makes it easy to get your products front and center to start making sales.
If you have any questions about how the cart system works, please visit Cart66.com or try the free Cart66 Lite plugin for yourself. This theme simply styles how Cart66 looks and displays, it does nothing to the functionality of Cart66.
Works with all versions of Cart66
That's right, Stored 3.0 now supports Cart66 Cloud! So whatever version of Cart66 you want to use, Stored supports it!
Affiliate Mode
Affiliate Mode makes it easy for affiliates to create products and link the Buy Now button to another website with your affiliate link. It's as easy as copy and paste. Cart66 not required.
- Translation file included! – Use Stored WP in any language
- jQuery slider on the home page to showcase your featured products, plus jQuery hovers for the rest of your products.
- Simply upload your product images to that post and Stored will automatically generate a lightbox gallery on that product's page. No messy shortcodes or plugins needed. It's like magic.
- Responsive widgets on the home page. Put them either above or below the latest products and use as many as you want. Stored will automatically size them and make them look good.
- Light and Dark color schemes along with 6 color options for the buttons and accents across the site.
- Easy setup with easy to follow instructions.
- Valid XHTML
Support is provided to all customers at http://support.designcrumbs.com. You'll need your Purchase Code to access this theme's section in the forum. To find your purchase code, go to your Downloads page, click on "License Certificate" on the theme you wish to get support on, open the file and look for the "Item Purchase Code". That's what you'll need.
Shirts in the demo courtesy of Arquebus Clothing
To sell items, this theme requires the Cart66 Ecommerce Plugin
- 3.0.2: Added Fitvidjs, support for category descriptions, CSS updates for Cart66 buttons, update to the cart link for Cart66 Cloud
- 3.0.1: Fix for single product pages when running in Affiliate Mode.
- 3.0: Stored now supports Cart66 Cloud in addition to Lite and Pro! This update also includes several backend updates
- 2.5: Updated fancyBox, Number of items in cart now update based on quantity, changed several jQuery items to CSS3
- 2.4.3: Update to fix a styling issue brought on by the latest Contact Form 7
- 2.4.2: Minor CSS design updates (keepin' it awesome), updated comments form & code in comments.php and functions.php
- 2.4.1: Removed shortcodes (try a plugin), removed featured image from gallery thumbnails, many behind the scenes updates
- 2.4: File structure changes, updates to jquery UI, adjustments for newer Cart66 versions
- 2.3.3: Product galleries now have next and previous on the lightbox
- 2.3.2: Added class "entry-content" to product pages
- 2.3.1: Added support for Custom Post Type for the latest Cart66
- 2.3: Added support for Gravity Forms
- 2.2: Localized – Stored is now ready for any language
- 2.1: "Your Cart" now updates live. Other jQuery fixes included as well.
- 2.0: Created Affiliate Mode.
- 1.4.1: CSS fix for Cart66 Pro users.
- 1.4: Fixed another issue in search results and a small bug in the blog.
- 1.3: Fixed an issue were search results weren't showing correctly.
- 1.2: Fixed an issue concerning product archives.
- 1.1: Various bug and small issue fixes
- 1.0: Initial release
Reviews & Comments
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|Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Arts and Sciences
|Survey of World Literature to 1650
|Three semester hours. (FL)
Familiarizes the student with several non-English literary traditions and gives them an understanding of the inter-relatedness of cultures and civilizations. Substantial writing required. Prerequisite: ENGL 1302 or equivalent course. See Texas Success Initiative in the section entitled UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.
Home - General Information - Student Services -
Academic Undergraduate Regulations -
Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
Graduate Degrees - Course Descriptions - Faculty -
Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D


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It's no secret that I am crazy about tie-dye and one of the biggest reasons I love being an iLoveToCreate blogger is for all of the tie-dye projects I get to do! And if you think tie-dye is just for tee shirts, well, you've got another thing coming!
First up, are you looking to add some color to your bedroom? Why not tie-dye everything?! Get the directions from the iLoveToCreate website: Dreaming in Color Tie-Dye Bedding.
Okay, so this one is by me BUT I had gotten so much interest in this project and the end results wound up being so awesome that I just have to share. Did you know you can tie-dye your embroidery floss? Get the deets to make your own variegated floss: Variegate Your Own Floss
To be honest I've never owned a pair of Uggs because I kind of think they're Ugg-ly. BUT I love the way an old and wonr out pair can be totally reinvigorated (and the back tag saved from dye) with this interesting repurpose from HubPages. How to Tie-Dye Ugg Boots.
Sometimes finding the perfect accent lamp shade is impossible. So why not DIY and dye your shade to something awesome, eye-catching and totally unique all at the same time? Full directions to make your own (which looks smashing in a mostly white room, too, does it not?) at iLoveToCreate: Shades of Moody Blues
Okay, so maybe a laundry sack isn't inherently a fun item BUT this laundry sack totally is. I like this for several reasons... it's totally simple to make and it's eye catching which means that if and when the kids toss this around in their messy closet floor you'll be able to spy it pretty quickly. Fab and fun tutorial from Life Your Way: Make a Pillowcase Laundry Sack.
Fringe art is crazy super hot but all I can think of seeing tutorials for are yarn. Which is awesome if you knit or crochet, but what if you don't? Do you really want to buy 4 skeins of yarn that you have no use for after you've taken out only 1/4 of it? But everybody has old tee shirts they can repurpose! I am in LOVE with this piece from Home-ology, Modern Vintage and I'm sure you are to. Get the DIY: Tie-Dye Textile Wall Art
With tie-dye being so hot this summer, why the heck would you not want to bring this awesome trend into your home decor? Check out how Designs by Studio C did just that with this amazing tie-dyed upholstery bench. Tie-Dyeing Fabric for a Bench Seat
I absolutely LOVE Frida Kahlo and almost all of my college art projects that dealt with using an artist as inspiration or to imitate as our own self portrait always went straight to the talented Miss Kahlo. So when I saw that Megan Nicolay tie-dyed up some doo-dads for a Kahlo-like 'do I thought it was just about the neatest thing I'd seen in ages! See how to rock this look: How to Make Friday-Style Braids
Yet another iLoveToCreate post, this time from the talented Aunt Peaches, bringing color into your every day life. I mean, why in the world should hanging things be dull? Two-Tone Tie-Dye Clothespins.
Leave it to the talented Crafty Chica to take on dyeing real roses. Yep, this super crafty lady actually tie-dyed roses! LOVE! See how to tie-dye up your own: Make Tie-Dyed Roses
So if the first round of tie-dyed bed linens wasn't quite your thing, why not go a bit more subtle? Design Love Fest knocks this DIY out of the park super hardcore. In fact, I would snap these babies up in the store had I seen them. Perfection! Learn how to make your own: Tie-Dyed Sheets and Pillowcases
I had one reason that I wanted to get back into tie-dyeing as an adult... I wanted to knock out some awesome socks! See how to do just that in the fab tutorial here at iLoveToCreate but remember, you need all cotton socks to achieve these amazingly bright colors! How to Make Tie-Dye Rainbow Socks
Rag quilts are tops in my books. Add in tie-dye and I'm all about it. See how to make this fab throw, picnic blanket or bedding accessory with a super tutorial from My 3 Monsters: Tie-Dye Picnic Quilt
Big props to one Miss Jaderbomb who totally rocked the tie-dye and panties. The idea is simple but the results are super fun. And while I've made loads of these under the seams cuties, I've never been brave enough to post a DIY - which makes this my favorite tutorial of this entire roundup! Get the tute: Cute Tie-Dyed Undies Tutorial
Head over to our TIE DYE YOUR SUMMER site for even more inspiration, how-to's, and fun videos to get you mega-inspired for some DIY summer fun!


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Part I: Getting Ready for IVF.
Chapter 1: Taking First Things First.
Chapter 2: Why Us? Going Through the Emotions of Being Infertile.
Chapter 3: Setting the Perfect Scene.
Part II: All You Need to Know About IVF.
Chapter 4: The Law and the Team.
Chapter 5: Taking IVF One Step at a Time.
Chapter 6: Taking Drugs, Drugs and More Drugs.
Chapter 7: Taking a Peek Inside the Lab.
Chapter 8: Assessing the Odds of Your Dream Coming True.
Chapter 9: Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster of the IVF Cycle.
Part III: Understanding the Risks of IVF.
Chapter 10: Understanding the Risks of IVF to Your Physical Health.
Chapter 11: Realising How IVF Can Affect Your Mental Health.
Chapter 12: Moving On When IVF Doesn't Work.
Part IV: Pushing the Boundaries.
Chapter 13: Using a Donor.
Chapter 14: Using a Surrogate.
Chapter 15: Putting Things on Ice.
Chapter 16: Avoiding Passing on 'Bad' Genes.
Chapter 17: Looking at Future Possibilities.
Part V: Beyond IVF.
Chapter 18: Jumping For Joy: Baby On the Way!
Chapter 19: Welcoming Your Baby to the World.
Chapter 20: Coming Home With Your New Baby.
Chapter 21: Living and Loving Life with Your New Family Member.
Part VI: The Part of Tens.
Chapter 22: Ten Tips for Surviving IVF.
Chapter 23: Ten Tips for New IVF Parents.
Part VII: Appendixes.
Appendix A: Abbreviations.
Appendix B: What Does This Mean? (A Glossary of Terms).
Appendix C: Web Resources.


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17-year-old Aaron Kelly saw his luck run out Wednesday night as he was the latest hopeful to be eliminated from American Idol.
Aaron's rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon" failed to impress the home viewers after a tough Frank Sinatra-themed week for the five remaining Idols. "I've had a great time. I've had a blast," said a shocked Aaron upon hearing the news of his elimination.
Rounding up with bottom two with Aaron was surprisingly Michael Lynche, despite receiving praise from the judges for his performance of "The Way You Look Tonight." Actor and singer Jamie Foxx will be on the show next week to mentor the 4 remaining finalists.
In other Idol news, ratings continue to dip for the show, in what some are calling the worst season ever. The ratings have dropped a drastic 20% in just the last three weeks.
That is not the worst news however, as a new report shows Tuesday's episode brought in the lowest ratings for the show since 2002. The Tuesday night show averaged 17.1 million viewers, compared to Dancing With The Stars which averaged 19.6 million viewers this week.
Some are wondering whether the departure of longtime host Paula Abdul and the pending exit of Simon Cowell, might be part of the reason for the ratings dip. What a lot of people seem to agree on however is that this season has a lackluster of contestants.
The reason I can't bring myself to like Idol is simply because I feel the judges nitpick the contestants' performances. And then we have the four judges giving very conflicting criticism to the contestants. I mean hello, are they all not watching the same performances? But that's not all. The judges also seem to play favoritism, giving constant, sometimes undeserved, praises to their favorite contestants. Think Crystal Bowersox and Michael Lynche this season. It seems these two were made to be the frontrunners very early on the season. So the question is why waste my time watching for 12 weeks if Crystal and Michael will likely be in the final 2?
[polldaddy poll=3162199]


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|Birth Date:
|March 29, 1990
|Ooltewah, Tenn.
|High School:
|Pre-Physical Threapy
In 2010 (Sophomore): Holly stood strong on the mound in 2010, compiling a 16-14 record alongside a 2.81 ERA...her 176 innings pitched led the team in that category...also led the team with 143 strikeouts and opposing batting avg at .243...her ten strikeout game against Alabama State (2/20) was the highest for any Tech pitcher all season...named to the all-OVC second team for her stellar postseason play...earned her first career OVC Pitcher of the Week honor by shutting down Morehead State (4/25)...recognized by the All-Tournament team for her excellence in pitching.
In 2009 (Freshman): Holly started 27 games at pitcher in her debut season, striking out 118 batters in 183.1 innings and earning the team awards of Pitcher of the Year and Freshman of the Year...an OVC All-Newcomer Team honoree, she finished the year with a 14-16 record and team-best 2.90 ERA...pitched a no-hitter against Tennessee Wesleyan (3/19), striking out seven and allowing just two walks...finished the season with three shutouts and 19 complete games...hurled two shutouts late in the season against eventual OVC Tournament Champion UT Martin...on the offensive side, belted five home runs and four doubles and led the team in walks with 24...went 3-for-3 with a home run and four RBIs in her first collegiate game against Campbell (2/6)...went 2-for-4 with a home run, two runs scored and three RBIs against Kennesaw State (2/14)...earned a spot on both the OVC Commissioner's Honor Roll and the Athletic Director's Honor Roll.
High School: Holly played two sports, softball and volleyball, while at Ooltewah High School including playing softball all four years for coach Norma Nelson...lettered each year on the diamond as a pitcher and outfielder...helped her team to a 20-6 record her junior season with an ERA of 0.35 and batted .430...helped OHS to the 2008 Tennessee State Championship with a record of 46-3...was named All-City Best of Preps Player of the Year and Tennessee Gatorade Player of the Year.
Personal: Holly Ellen Thomas is the daughter of Norman and Ellen Thomas of Chattanooga, Tenn...birthday is March 29, 1990...majoring in pre-physical therapy.


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Vernon Kilns was the name used by Vernon Potteries, Ltd. The company, which started in 1912 in Vernon, California, was originally called Poxon China. In 1931 the company was sold and renamed Vernon Kilns. It made dinnerware and figurines until it went out of business in 1953. The molds were bought by Metlox, which continued to make some patterns. Collectors search for the brightly colored dinnerware and the pieces designed by Rockwell Kent, Walt Disney, and Don Blanding. Vernon's plaid patterns are also favorites among collectors.
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