Excerpt of new Wall Street Journal book details Brauchli departure

Vanity Fair has an excerpt in its latest issue of the Sarah Ellison book about Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of The Wall Street Journal called “War at the Wall Street Journal.”

The excerpt focuses on the ouster of managing editor Marcus Brauchli.

Here is a sample:

“Brauchli had studied up on his subject, reading every Murdoch book he could get his hands on, including Full Disclosure, former Sunday Times of London editor Andrew Neil’s account of how Murdoch had courted and eventually shunned him. Despite the cautionary tale, Brauchli, like Neil, felt he would be the exception to the rule, the man to make it work with Murdoch. Though his belief in his own ability had been the key to his success, it was also a source of amusement for some editors.

“Toward the end of the meeting that April morning, Brauchli checked his BlackBerry and noticed that he had a message from the new Journal publisher, Robert Thomson, the former editor of The Times of London, whom Murdoch had installed in the Journal offices as his eyes and ears. After announcing to his editors that he had to excuse himself and go to another meeting, Brauchli returned the call. “We have to go and talk to Les,” Thomson said, referring to Leslie Hinton, the Murdoch-appointed C.E.O. of Dow Jones. Hinton, who had just returned from China, had been with Murdoch virtually his entire career; he remembered fetching him sandwiches when the two were working at Murdoch’s first paper, the Adelaide News.

“‘Ni hao,’ Brauchli said as they entered Hinton’s office, Mandarin for ‘Hello.’ Hinton didn’t smile.

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

Read more here.