Her blunt style is also a problem. As a reporter, this brusqueness and determination yielded incredible access and important stories. “She was a phenomenal scoop artist,” says Seth Lipsky, who edited her Pulitzer Prize–winning interviews with King Hussein. “She actually co-piloted his plane going around India with him—the king is in the pilot seat, she’s in the co-pilot seat.” In management, this temperament didn’t serve her nearly as well. A 1997 Vanity Fair profile was rife with anecdotes exposing her shrewish side. During her stint as foreign editor, House once visited a bureau, gathered the staff, and brutally ripped apart articles written by reporters in the room. At a 1986 wedding reception, while still a reporter, she famously hurled a glass of wine at managing editor Norman Pearlstine after he forbade her from appearing on The McLaughlin Group.

When the Wall Street Journal newsroom returned to its refurbished building after the September 11 attacks blew out its windows and covered it in ash, House didn’t make an appearance there for nearly three weeks. “There was so much anxiety about the return,” says Gardiner Harris, a Journal reporter who recently migrated to the Times. “We could have used some leadership.” When she finally turned up, an editor led her around the room, introducing her to reporters and explaining the layout of the reoccupied floor. “She didn’t seem to know people—it was as if a Japanese tourist were visiting,” Harris recalls. “I can’t tell you how angry we were.”

House gets pilloried so often that she has become a cartoon. Her nasty image, however, belies what Phil Revzin, a former Dow Jones executive and editor, calls a “deep emotional connection to—and pride in—the Journal as the best newspaper in the world.” When addressing orientation meetings for new reporters, she invariably chokes up. “She gets teary when talking about the mission of the Journal,” Washington reporter Tom Hamburger, now with the Los Angeles Times, recalls. The tears also flowed during two interviews with The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta in 2003—nine times, in fact. But when she rehashed her performance with colleagues, she claimed not to remember the crying. “You’re not dealing with a callous person,” one of her friends says, “just someone lacking self-awareness.”

Her battle to become CEO will require overcoming that reputation. Already, concerns have been raised about her age. She will be 59 when her husband retires. Kann, however, has every reason to think that he can persuade the board and the Bancroft family of the wisdom of tapping House. Not only did Kann select many of the company’s directors, he has effectively bought the family’s support. During the nineties, his board gradually raised the quarterly dividend—from 19 cents per share to 25 cents—despite an often stagnant stock price. This consumed an enormous portion of the company’s cash. In 2002, Dow Jones paid $82 million in dividends, while it brought in a net income of only $100 million. Earlier this year, when the Bancrofts clamored to sell more of their stock, Kann and his board rewrote the corporate rules to ensure the family’s continued control of the company, though they no longer owned anywhere near a majority of shares. This careful preservation of family privilege helps explain how Kann has kept his job for fifteen years.

If the board continues to harbor doubts about House, the company could pluck its next CEO from outside, a break from custom. Or it could choose a dark horse, like Gordon Crovitz, the widely admired Rhodes scholar who ran the Far Eastern Economic Review and now heads the company’s successful digital-publishing arm. In perhaps a sign of his rising prospects, reporters and editors note that House has treated him with increasing hostility in meetings and attempted to bring more of WSJ.com within her ambit.

But House’s most likely rival is Richard Zannino. In the building, some refer to him as “The Garmento.” That’s a dig alluding to his prior career as an executive at Liz Claiborne and Saks Fifth Avenue, and to his supposed ignorance of the values of journalism. “They think I’m a digit-head,” Zannino says. “People have a misconception of me.” When I met him in the Dow Jones conference room, he looked every part the Saks veteran, down to his silver cuff links. This alone sets him apart from his fellow executives. Steven Goldstein, a former head of Dow Jones corporate communications, says, “When I was there, he was the person most likely to shop at Bergdorf.”

I asked Zannino to describe the differences between Liz Claiborne and Dow Jones. “There are far more similarities than differences,” he began. “They are all about serving readers, which are customers, understanding those wants and needs and doing it with a purpose in mind, doing it consistent with enhancing earnings and producing shareholder value.” He paused a beat, realizing that he had skipped the all-important caveat. “The biggest difference is the impact publishing has on the world.”