Thomson named Wall Street Journal managing editor

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. named Robert Thomson managing editor of The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, following the resignation last month of Marcus Brauchli after less than a year on the job.

Thomson had been brought in last December as publisher of the Journal, with broad editorial oversight of paper, after News Corp. bought the Journal's parent company Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion.

Thomson had been widely seen as the likely candidate to succeed Brauchli. He had been editor of News Corp.'s The Times newspaper in London and had also overseen the expansion of the U.S. edition of Pearson PLC's Financial Times.

Brauchli had declined to be interviewed about his departure at the time but said in a statement that he had come to believe that "the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing."

Ever since closing the deal for Dow Jones in December, News Corp. has been moving quickly to reshape the Journal to have a greater focus on general and political news and to compete more aggressively with The New York Times for national readers and advertisers.

A special committee charged with overseeing the editorial integrity of the Journal had criticized the handling of Brauchli's departure, saying it wasn't notified of the process leading to his resignation in a timely manner.

The committee must approve any removal or hiring of key editorial executives at Dow Jones, including the managing editor of the Journal, but its charter didn't specifically address the situation of a resignation.

Thomas Bray, the chairman of the committee, said in an interview Tuesday that "things were handled much differently and much better from our perspective this time around" and that there was "a real feeling of mutual endeavor." Bray is a former editorial page editor and columnist at The Detroit News.

The committee had been put in place last year as a condition for News Corp. to buy Dow Jones, following concerns from some members of the Bancroft family, which had controlled Dow Jones for more than a century, about keeping the Journal free from corporate interference under Murdoch. Murdoch has called those concerns unjustified.

"In hindsight, we recognize it would have been more appropriate to have advised the committee in advance of reaching an agreement with Mr. Brauchli," Les Hinton, the chief executive officer of Dow Jones, said in a statement.

Hinton added that the company has apologized to the committee's members and pledged to consult with them before doing anything to materially change an editor's responsibilities or reporting relationships.

In a statement to be published in Wednesday editions of the Journal, the committee said it had also negotiated several amendments to its agreement with News Corp. that "explicitly require" the "timely notification" of the committee and its approval before anything is done that might lead to the removal of the Journal's managing editor or the editor of the editorial page.

Hinton will assume Thomson's role as publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Paul Gigot, the editor of the Journal's editorial page, will report to Hinton.

In his new role, which he will assume immediately, Thomson will also be editor-in-chief of Dow Jones, with Neal Lipschutz, the managing editor of Dow Jones Newswires, a real-time financial reporting service, reporting to him.