Shaping how modern journalism is practiced

Lawrence Armour reviews for Fortune the book “Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at The Wall Street Journal” coming out by former Wall Street Journal managing editor and eventual Dow Jones & Co. CEO Warren Phillips about the newspaper and company’s growth.

Armour writes, “To his credit, Phillips also covers some of Dow Jones’ more celebrated missteps during his tenure. The company’s $1.6 billion investment in financial data provider Telerate went down the tubes after a nimble competitor called Bloomberg appeared on the scene. Dow Jones also left billions on the table by selling its 24.5% interest in Continental Cablevision too early, and was forced to shutter properties like Book Digest and the National Observer.

“On the downside, the book has too much name dropping; come on, Warren, who wouldn’t want to take one of the most powerful people in publishing out to lunch or invite him to the Vineyard for a summer weekend? It lacks details of the behind-the-scenes activities that took place in the Journal trenches when a foreign correspondent was arrested and jailed in Iran; when the SEC discovered that a Journal market writer was sharing inside information with brokers; and other high-profile skirmishes the Journal got into in those days because it wasn’t afraid to stick its chin out.

“Phillips gives proper credit to Barney Kilgore, Bill Kerby, Vermont Royster, and other pioneers who helped sculpt the paper. He doesn’t, however, devote much space to the Journal graduates who now hold top positions at places like Time Inc., Bloomberg, the New York Times, Washington Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Thomson Reuters and Fortune. Shame. It would have made two key points: that Warren Phillips was a good guy to work for and that he and the old Wall Street Journal played an important role in shaping how modern journalism is practiced.”

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