Our coverage of the changes is here.

June 13, 2007

Colleagues:

Today, I am announcing a realignment of the Journal’s top editing ranks that is aimed at better positioning us to benefit from the profound changes sweeping the news business. We have been as agile as anyone in recent years. We continue to produce the world’s best journalism, tailored to an audience that seeks to understand the context and meaning of events, not only in business but generally. And yet we must adapt constantly to do if we want to stay competitive.

Today’s reorganization is intended to accomplish several things. First, it will fully complete the integration of our print and online news operations at Dow Jones. That positions us to innovate online and in other new media. Second, it unifies all our international news under one roof, including the European and Asian editions and the paper’s foreign staff. This allows us to extend our franchise as the world’s global business news leader. Finally, it will sharpen the identities of the Journal’s feature sections.

One of the news department’s most skillful change agents is Bill Grueskin, who as managing editor of WSJ.com has made the Journal’s online edition a big success, with nearly 1 million paying subscribers. He will apply his tremendous creative energy to a new role, becoming the Journal franchise’s deputy managing editor for news. In that job, Bill will oversee a melding of the online and print Journals and a rethinking of how we approach and produce news. The combined news desks will report to him, as will the South Brunswick news teams under Assistant Managing Editor Alan Anspaugh and Robin Haynes. In addition, Bill will oversee our U.S. bureaus and work with bureau chiefs to ensure we are pioneering in the ways we cover news from the field.

Bill’s mission is to draw on the news resources we have at Dow Jones to ensure that each edition of the Journal—both print and online, in the U.S. and abroad—is getting the right content at the right time, without detracting from our core commitment to the long-form, deeply reported narrative and analytic journalism that defines the Journal.

As Bill thinks about how we cover news, Alan Murray will be thinking about how we deliver it.
Alan, now an assistant managing editor and the Journal’s “Business” columnist, will assume a new role: executive editor, online. His central charge is to help our news departments to be more entrepreneurial in the ways we serve our readers.

Alan will oversee a wide domain. Bill’s successor as managing editor of WSJ.com, who has yet to be named, will report to Alan. So will Dave Callaway, managing editor of MarketWatch, Dow Jones’s popular, San Francisco-based website.

Alan also will oversee editorial development and innovation for new media, at WSJ.com and related “vertical” websites, and for other online products and related events or conferences. He will work to develop news products for mobile delivery. And he will have editorial responsibility for the Dow Jones video group. Alan will retain his role as the overseer of the Dow Jones relationship with CNBC and for book publishing.

Mike Miller, our superb Page One editor and before that editor of the Marketplace page, will become the Journal franchise’s deputy managing editor for enterprise journalism. He will oversee the Marketplace section, under editor Melinda Beck; the Personal Journal section, under editor Hilary Stout; Weekend Journal, under Eben Shapiro; the Pursuits section, under Tom Weber; and the special reports, under Larry Rout.

The significance of this change is that it brings our news feature sections into a single structure. Melinda and Hilary also will have greater responsibility for their entire sections, making them, like Eben and Tom, section editors. All of these editors, with your help, will be looking for ways to deliver distinctive stories and material from those sections through new media. Edward Felsenthal, who has been overseeing Personal Journal, Weekend and Pursuits, will work with me on initiatives designed to extend the reach of our “business of life” coverage in print and online.

Dan Hertzberg, now senior deputy managing editor and the engine of the Journal’s news department in so many ways, will become deputy managing editor for international news. In that role, Dan will oversee the Journal’s international editions, as well as our foreign bureaus. Dan will relocate to Europe, so that he will overlap with most key time zones. His extensive knowledge of markets and financial news will bolster our coverage in those key areas especially, and his authority and experience in New York will ensure that all foreign coverage gets appropriate attention at headquarters.

The managing editors in Asia and Europe, Christine Glancey and Jesse Lewis, will report to Dan. He also will help to develop our relationship with our new colleagues at Financial News in London and will work with the business side of the Journal to develop new editorial products internationally.
Laurie Hays, the national editor for the last four years and an outstanding news leader, will become deputy managing editor for projects. In that role, Laurie will oversee our investigative teams and will work with page editors, bureau chiefs and reporters across the paper to develop significant projects that may cross bureau or geographical lines. From time to time, she also will help to manage surges of coverage on big, complicated stories. She also will be charged with developing much-needed computer-assisted reporting skills at the Journal.

For the first several months of the transition, Laurie will work closely with Bill Grueskin and others he will designate to plan and implement the melding of the print and online news desks. As that effort advances, Laurie will assume her new portfolio.

Mike Williams, now editor in Europe and the editor responsible for the Journal’s energy coverage, will return this summer to New York as page one editor. A veteran foreign correspondent, Mike has also been a deputy foreign editor. Anyone who has worked with him knows he is a brilliant conceptualizer of stories and a fast, subtle hand at editing.

John Bussey, now editor in Asia and one of our smartest thinkers on international affairs, economics and business, will take a significant new writing assignment.

The page one editor, the executive editor for online and the deputy managing editors, including our much-valued standards czar, Alix Freedman, will report to me, as will Money & Investing Editor Nik Deogun. Assistant Managing Editors Cathy Panagoulias and Reg Chua, two of the most vital and knowledgable people in the newsroom, also will report to and continue to work closely with me.

These changes will take effect in July, but some of the transitions may take additional time.
These are large changes. I know it will take some time to digest them. But this is a strong team and I look forward to working closely with all of them and all of you. I am confident they will position us to be maximally competitive in a fast-changing world, and enable the Journal to thrive and best serve our readers in print and online.

Regards,
Brauchli, NY