War At The Wall Street Journal Inside the Struggle to Control An American Business Empire by Sarah Ellison

War At The Wall Street Journal Inside the Struggle to Control An American Business Empire by Sarah Ellison

Sarah Ellison used to work for the Wall Street Journal before News Corp's takeover of the journal. She wrote this book using a compilation of interviews and newspaper stories. The book feels like you are at many of the reconstructed conversations and deals inside the book. It also describes the people very well; the Bancroft family, the Hill Family, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Kann, Marty Lipton, and others.

This book is a story of deal making and business politics. Sarah Ellison is describing conversations in board rooms, corporate jets, on cell phones, in restaurants, and in private conference rooms. There are no complex charts, managerial theories, or financial figures. We get to read the good and bad characteristics of the people involved; hatreds, rivalries, obsequiousness, personal habits, and fallibilities of some of the most powerful people in the news business.

Sarah Ellison describes the internal workings of the merger between Newscorp and Dow Jones. The focus is on the changes in editorial control and style in the Wall Street Journal. We get to read about how Rupert Murdoch fires and hires people to remake the paper into a different kind of newspaper. Rupert Murdoch's goal is to counter the New York Times by remaking the paper from a conservative business paper into a more national right wing paper which covers politics and culture in addition to business.

She also tells the story of a family in conflict, the Bancroft family who had owned the Dow Jones company for 105 years. It describes how the rise of Google and Yahoo and other new media companies drove down the price of newspaper stocks and caused consolidation in the industry. Rupert Murdoch basically offered more than any other company to take control of Dow Jones.

The story is intriguing. If you want to understand how the news is becoming more polarized between left and right, this book shows how Rupert Murdoch works. It describes a very antagonistic style of news and politics. I found the focus on people and deal making to be different than most business books. There is a very extensive index and notes at the end of the book. The implications of this story are still unfolding.

Daily Thoughts 5/17/2010

Charles Dickens, William Powell Frith, 1859

Daily Thoughts 5/17/2010

William Gibson has a near future thriller coming out called Zero History. His last book Spook Country also fits in this genre of suspense. It is borderline science fiction. Also, China Mieville is coming out with a new novel, Kraken which should be interesting.

Today has been quiet, it has been a lot of meetings. First a meeting on the law collection, then a meeting on public service, then some ordering, then some reference work. A solid, steady day.

I finished reading War at the Wall Street Journal. The final section is a description of the transformation under Rupert Murdoch and News Corp from a rather staid conservative business journal to a right leaning national paper with more coverage of national news and less coverage of business. It is hard to call The Wall Street Journal a pure business paper anymore. It is the newspaper which combines with Fox 5 News to make a right leaning media conglomerate. I find the Wall Street Journal to be much more sensationalized.

Right now, I am reading Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library, Third Edition by Joyce G. Saricks. The book reminded me of the reference book Genreflecting which is one of my favorite reference books. It led me to this blog for readers advisory. http://www.readersadvisoronline.com/blog/

Daily Thoughts 5/14/2010

Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire (BNU) National University and Library Strasbourg, France, Room 4, Main Reading Room, Image listed as public domain on Wikimedia

Daily Thoughts 5/14/2010

I was looking at the Book Expo America exhibitor list and I noticed that Powell's book which is the largest bookstore in the world in Portland, Oregon has also become a distributor Powell's Books Wholesale
http://www.powellsbookswholesale.com/ . I find this rather interesting, because Strand Bookstore is also distributing books to libraries http://www.strandbooks.com/app/www/p/libserv/ . It seems as the giant independents grow in the United States, they are also expanding into the wholesaling books. I like looking at Powell's and the Strand because they have many titles which I cannot find in Amazon, Baker and Taylor, and many other companies. They stock a lot of obscure and academic titles.

Today has been pretty quiet. I have been working a bit on signage and shifting books in the storage area. There is an African American Books festival this Saturday so I had some more bookmarks printed, printed up some flyers for the graphic novels club and the poetry club for promotion. We are working on putting together a Bookletters page as well.

A few graphic novels came in today that look interesting; Halo Helljumper, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight graphic novel, and Penny Century by Jaime Hermandez. I am cutting bookmarks printed from card stock right now. I have three bookmarks I am looking at one for inspirational Fiction, another on graphic novels, and another on writing books.

I started reading War At The Wall Street Journal Inside The Struggle to Control An American Business Empire by Sarah Ellison. The book focuses on the people and families in the story. It is character driven. The characters are people like Rupert Murdoch, Peter Kann, the Bancroft family, and Arthur Sulzberger. The names are of the people who run the big media conglomerates.

My book for the Readers Advisory 101 class was delivered today, Readers Advisory Service in the Public Library, Third Edition by Joyce G. Saricks.

Daily Thoughts 5/4/2010

Tuschezeichnung "Lesende Frau". 1690, Susanna Maria Sandrart

Daily Thoughts 5/4/2010

I read some more of Making Ideas Happen on the way to work. It is quite interesting. He describes a system where you have projects to take action on, ideas which you put on the backburner, and ideas that you refer to for information.

I have been reading various review material today. A book by Sarah Ellison called War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire caught my attention. It is about Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch affects business tremendously.

I also did some more work making flyers. I have some invitations from the American Association of Publishers for lunches and dinner at Book Expo America. It looks interesting. I'll probably do the lunch.

I spent some time talking to a gentleman about Hindi and Urdu books. It was interesting. He wanted to know about how libraries chose books for foreign language collections. He had a catalog of different publications in Hindi. One of the things we get asked for a lot more than anything else is learning different languages.

I also spent time looking at the Indie Next, Powell's Bookstore online which is the largest independent bookstore in the United States, and the Strand Bookstore online.

I read some more of Making Ideas Happen. Another central tenet of the book is to do things then remind yourself that you have finished what you have done before. I like that some of the people written about in the book are bestselling authors like James Patterson and John Grisham. He talks about how their success is often about a lot of work and planning.