War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire »

SARAH ELLISON led the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones. Her stories about the media business have been recognized by the Newswomen’s Club of New York and the New York Press Club.

This is a tale about big business, an imploding dynasty, a mogul at war, and a deal that sums up an era of change. The main character, rocked by feuding factions and those who would remake it, is the Wall Street Journal, which affects the thoughts, votes, and stocks of two million readers daily. Sarah Ellison, while at the Journal, won praise for covering the $5 billion acquisition that transformed the pride of Dow Jones and the estimable but eccentric Bancroft family into the jewel of Rupert Murdoch's kingdom. Here she expands her work, using her knowledge of the paper and its people to go deep inside the landmark transaction, as no outsider has or can, and also far beyond it, into the rocky transition when Murdoch's crew tussled with old Journal hands and geared up for battle with the New York Times. With access to all the players, Ellison moves from newsrooms (where editors duel) to estates (where the Bancrofts go at it like the Ewings). She shows Murdoch, finally, for who he is--maneuvering, firing, undoing all that the Bancrofts had protected.

Here is a superlative account of a deal with reverberations beyond the news, told with the storytelling savvy that transforms big stories into timeless chronicles of American life and power.

The Washington Post - Jack Shafer

Ellison…uses her access to "all of the significant players in the narrative," as she puts it in her source notes, to chronicle the deal with precision. Inside the news business such detailed narratives are called "tick-tocks," and hers beats like a metronome…When [Murdoch] dies, the War at the Wall Street Journal saga is likely to be replayed as the Murdoch children squabble over whether it would be wiser to preserve Dad's empire or sell it to the highest bidder. I'd want Sarah Ellison on that story.