Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at The Wall Street Journal

In this engaging, straightforward book, Phillips, former managing editor at the Wall Street Journal and publisher/CEO of Dow Jones & Co., tells the dual story of his life as an iconic man of print and the maturation of the most influential business newspapers. His romance with the news business began with a tour of the fabled New York Daily News with his father as a child, continuing with a stint as a copyboy at the New York Herald Tribune, followed as a full-time German correspondent at WSJ, with stories filed in Greece, Turkey, and London. Phillips comes across as an industrious, resourceful, and hugely ambitious worker bee with his own ideas as he soars up the corporate ladder from managing editor posts in Chicago and New York before landing the plum jobs of publisher and CEO of WSJ's parent company, Dow Jones. He is especially candid about the CIA's overtures to use the paper as a cover, Asian and European triumphs and setbacks, the digital age's surprising potency, staff betrayals, and Rupert Murdoch's power grab. Reading Phillips's earnest, unadorned account of this prestigious publication is a solid refresher course in the history of the golden era of American newspapers. (Sept.)