Free War at the Wall Street Journal by Sarah Ellison

life passion.
    Mike sat down in April and penned a letter of his own, this one to Peter Kann himself: "When I was growing up," he began, "Dow Jones was one of the most admired companies in the world ... Unfortunately, the experience for the sixth generation of my family ... is the opposite." He asked for the family, the company's management, and shareholders to "move from being bystanders to 'upstanders'" and take a more active role at Dow Jones. He asked (echoing Lowell's re
quest) that Dow Jones disclose its three-year business plan to all the members of the Bancroft family and allow them to participate in its revision.
    Kann wasn't about to allow a younger member of the Bancroft family to force Dow Jones into revealing its business plan; the request seemed naive. Kann knew from his rounds with Elisabeth and Billy that the family had its weak links, and he knew the Hills had been campaigning against him. He did what he could to keep the family informed about the great journalism they were protecting at Dow Jones, but Dow Jones's business was a different matter. Over the years, Kann had grown close to several members of the family, namely, William Cox Jr., shy Jane Cook, and her three daughters in New England—Martha Robes, Jean Stevenson, and Lisa Steele. He praised and courted the Bancrofts, invited them to his home, and socialized occasionally at their summer houses. He introduced them to the paper's Pulitzer Prize winners every year at the company's annual meeting and talked about how a company could have "values
and
value." He made them feel proud of the paper they controlled and told them that what they were doing—keeping the
Journal
safe from outside encroachments—was important.
    Deflecting complaints from the younger generation of Bancrofts was something Kann had grown accustomed to with Elisabeth and Billy. He answered questions with hypothetical responses and never responded to the family's concerns in writing. After he received Mike Hill's letter, he invited him in to meet with two members of Dow Jones's board of directors, Irv Hockaday and Frank Newman. Kann knew they would shoot down what Mike Hill was asking—opening up the company's strategic plan to a thirty-five-member family with a history of talking to the press. He never discussed the letter with Mike but cordially set up the meeting and promised not to attend, to allow a free and frank discussion between this young heir and two distinguished company directors.
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    Hockaday's wise and steady demeanor had helped persuade many of those whom he encountered of his sagacity and professionalism. A native midwesterner with a flat plains twang, he had previously been CEO of Hallmark, the long-successful family greeting-card company founded by J. C. Hall in 1910. Hockaday also served on the boards of the Estée Lauder Company and the Ford Motor Company, also family controlled and grappling with the modern-day tensions attendant to those situations. Compared to the Fords and the Lauders, the Bancrofts' much discussed "hands-off" approach was notable. Hockaday, who had taken in and learned from the situations and difficulties in all the corporations where he had served, almost certainly considered their distance—dissatisfied as it was—counterproductive. But he was a Princeton man, well bred and disciplined in the patriarchal fashion of old-school companies with familial constituencies. He was effective but rarely ruffled feathers. Frank Newman, the former president and CEO of Bankers Trust and the deputy treasury secretary under President Clinton, had been named to Dow Jones's board to appease the architects of Elisabeth Goth's rebellion eight years before. His résumé was unparalleled, and he was one of the heaviest hitters on the company's board.
    Mike Hill came to town that April for the company's annual shareholder meeting, which was open to any and all Dow Jones shareholders and attended by many of the Bancroft cousins. Mike