Company Apologizes in Ouster of Previous Editor
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Rupert Murdoch didn't have to look far to find the man he wanted to run the Wall Street Journal's newsroom.
One month after Murdoch's handpicked publisher, Robert Thomson, oversaw the ouster of the paper's top editor, Thomson himself got the job yesterday, along with broader responsibilities as editor in chief of parent company Dow Jones and its wire services.
Thomson, 47, like Murdoch an outspoken native of Australia, spent five years as editor of Murdoch's Times of London, taking over the Journal's business side shortly after Murdoch completed his $5 billion takeover in December. The incumbent editor, Marcus Brauchli, was forced out of his job in a way that stretched the limits of an agreement to protect the paper's integrity and which prompted a corporate apology yesterday.
Thomson issued no sweeping manifesto, telling the staff in a note that he is "deeply honored" by the chance to run "a news operation with enormous potential, both in the United States and around the world."
If there were any doubts that the new boss plans to remake the nation's premier financial newspaper, Thomson dispelled them in a recent interview, declaring that "American journalism has some soul-searching to do" and that Murdoch is "clearly interested in challenging the journalistic establishment."
Critics had doubted that Murdoch would keep his word when, as a condition of the purchase, he agreed not to fire Brauchli or two other top editors without the approval of an independent committee. But Brauchli, trying to act as a bridge between the existing staff and the new owners, was pressured into resigning last month, and the committee complained that it was informed only after the fact. The panel chose not to challenge the ouster.
Les Hinton, the chief executive of Dow Jones, who is also assuming Thomson's role of publisher, said in a statement that "in hindsight, we recognize it would have more been appropriate to have advised the committee in advance of reaching an agreement with Mr. Brauchli. We have apologized to the committee members and undertaken that in future we will consult with it and seek approval of the committee before taking any action" involving a top editor's duties or departure.
Murdoch said in a statement that Thomson's experience "equips him perfectly for the position," and the committee approved the job switch.
Brauchli had questioned whether Murdoch was going too far in changing the Journal from a financial newspaper to a general-interest paper intent on competing with the New York Times, whose coverage Thomson called "skewed" in the March interview with The Washington Post. He called the Times a leading proponent of "a sensibility that fetishizes prizes, that believes the length of a story is a measure of its worth."
Many Journal staffers were wary of Murdoch -- and some quit -- because of his history of meddling with editorial decisions at such publications as the New York Post and his close identification with such properties as Fox News and the Weekly Standard. But in his parting note to the staff, Brauchli said that "the new management scrupulously has avoided imposing any political or business viewpoints on our coverage."
A number of Journal staffers have been impressed by Murdoch's willingness to spend money on expanded political coverage and extra space for international reporting, even as some expressed concern that these moves, and an insistence on shorter stories, could muddy the paper's distinctive brand.
Thomson began his career as a teenage copy boy for the Melbourne Herald and eventually joined the Financial Times, covering Japan and China and becoming the paper's U.S. managing editor in 1998. At the Times of London, steeped in tradition for more than two centuries, he boosted circulation and transformed the broadsheet into a tabloid.
As the New York Times noted, Thomson joked in a speech last year that "it took an Australian to shrink it into a tabloid, or a compact. We used the 'c' word, so it was more socially acceptable.''
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