War at the Wall Street Journal Read Free Page B

capitalist and single largest shareholder in the Time Warner company. The two became a couple.)
    Lately, despite the efforts of his young wife, who was pushing Murdoch into the twenty-first century and into trendy black shirts, his age had begun to show. His eyes sagged. He meandered even more than usual in conversation and appeared, on occasion, more grandfather than rapacious mogul. Some of his executives saw his soft spot for the
Wall Street Journal
as evidence of his decline.
    When Diller reached Murdoch on the phone that morning, he had congratulated him and quipped, "I know you have nothing else going on, but I'm having some people on the boat tonight and wanted to see if you'd join me." Many empire builders would have had their own victory party planned, but Diller knew that Murdoch was neither a social animal nor a seeker of publicity. Murdoch had uncorked a bottle of Shiraz the previous afternoon with a few of his executives, but he had no wide group of friends to tap that night.
    "Well," Murdoch replied, "I'd love to come."
    Diller never liked his waters too calm. Releasing Sulzberger and Murdoch in the same room on this particular night added an interesting undercurrent. It was a worthy dramatic effort for Diller, a for
mer Paramount chieftain whose social life seemed about as recreational as open-heart surgery. The other guests would enjoy sizing up the competitors.
    In the early-evening sun, Murdoch had slipped on board quietly and made his way with his uneven gait to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, the succinct former businessman whom he greeted with what appeared to be genuine warmth. Practical and pragmatic, Murdoch preferred politicians to Hollywood types, and Bloomberg's business background and higher ambition made him a friend who would almost certainly be useful. Bloomberg could talk engagingly about Murdoch's true loves: media and politics. The mayor's date and longtime companion, Diana Taylor, the city's regal and unofficial first lady, chatted with Anna Wintour of
Vogue,
who had admired Taylor's style enough to feature her in a five-page spread in the magazine several years earlier.
    Film director Mike Nichols and his wife, Diane Sawyer, talked nearby, pleasant fixtures when Diller held court.
Vanity Fair
editor Graydon Carter had become a Diller devotee after the mogul helped Carter establish
Vanity Fairs
legendary post-Oscars fete in Hollywood. On the yacht, Carter chatted with John Huey, editor in chief of Time Inc., and Lally Weymouth, whose family controlled the Washington Post Company. Weymouth's daughter Katharine would soon take over as publisher of the
Post.
Steve Rattner, a former
Times
reporter who had become a powerful media financier and confidant of the Sulzbergers, talked with Carter's wife, Anna.
    As Murdoch moved on to greet the other guests, Sulzberger and Diller chatted with Bloomberg, whose company had not long ago completed construction on a gleaming monumental headquarters building of its own. All three men had, in fact, braved the difficulties of construction. Sulzberger had just overseen the completion of the new
Times
headquarters on Eighth Avenue, a creation of architect Renzo Piano that resembled a minimum-security prison. Critics noted that the building reflected that part of the
Times
's ethos that tried too hard to show its import. Still, that special kind of ambition had produced the paper's thirty-five bureaus around the world and its global perspective. The
Times
had always been committed to giving its readers the world beyond our shores and our Brangelinas. The creation of an American publication comparable to the
Times
or the
Journal
seemed unimaginable now. Some at the party wondered, Could Murdoch have built such an institution, or was it his role to just buy one?
    On the boat, Sulzberger pulled Murdoch aside. "I don't really feel that we can have dinner together without my telling you that we have an editorial about your takeover of the
Journal
in tomorrow