By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Less than five months after Rupert Murdoch took control of the Wall Street Journal, the paper's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, is resigning.

Under an agreement that enabled him to buy the nation's top financial newspaper, Murdoch promised not to remove three top-ranking editors, including Brauchli. But the Journal veteran has cleared the way for Murdoch to put his own person in the job by stepping aside. A Journal spokesman declined to comment last night, but the Journal confirmed the account on its Web site after Time published an online item about Brauchli's plans.

Some Journal staffers say Brauchli felt overshadowed by the paper's new publisher, Robert Thomson, a former editor of another Murdoch property, the Times of London.

Brauchli, who had been in the job for a year, was named to the post one day after Murdoch's News Corp. launched its $5 billion bid for the paper's parent company, Dow Jones. In an interview last month, he said Murdoch was "very engaged" with the paper but defended the newsroom's independence, adding that Murdoch sets "broad objectives" and lets his editors figure out how to meet them.

Thomson, in a separate interview, said Murdoch is "clearly interested in challenging the journalistic establishment" by broadening the Journal's coverage. The staff's concerns about political interference seemed to have eased as Murdoch began putting more resources into the Journal with no reported instances of political meddling. But the sense of anxiety could return if Murdoch names an editor, whether Thomson or someone else, from outside the Journal culture.

Under the purchase agreement signed by Murdoch, a special committee, some of whose members are independent of News Corp. and Dow Jones, must approve Brauchli's successor.