The New Republic

Shortly after nine in the morning on April 28, about two dozen
reporters and editors in The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau
assembled for the weekly staff meeting led by the D.C. bureau
chief, John Bussey. Seated on couches in the bureau's wood-paneled
parlor, the staffers waited to begin a conference call with Robert
Thomson, the Journal's publisher.The mood was uncomfortable. Only a week had passed since the paper's
managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, had resigned under pressure from
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the Journal's corporate parent, News
Corp. Brauchli's decision to accept millions of dollars in return
for signing a non-disclosure agreement had triggered paroxysms of
anger inside the Journal newsroom. "We're a business newspaper, so
we know a sell-out when we see one," one angry Journal staffer told
me.

With Brauchli's ouster, Thomson, who was appointed by Murdoch in
December 2007, is now acting as both publisher and de facto
managing editor, at least until Murdoch selects a replacement. The
conference call, along with nearly a dozen similar meetings with
Journal employees that week, was part of an effort to communicate
to the editorial staff Murdoch's unfolding plans for the paper.

Since News Corp. completed the $5 billion takeover of the paper last
year, Murdoch has signaled his desire for the Journal to be a
conservative paper of record to rival The New York Times, hoping to
serve business-minded readers who want a single source of news, be
it the meltdown at Bear Stearns, floods in the Midwest, or a car
bombing in Baghdad. On the call, according to staffers who
participated, Thomson reiterated his and Murdoch's interest in
international and political coverage and praised a page-one piece
about Bill Clinton's increasing presence on the campaign trail,
which ran in April, as the type of story he likes.

But many Journal staffers remain confused over where Murdoch is
taking the paper and whether, as a business proposition, a Journal
that tries to be all things to all people will risk ceding
financefocused readers to the resurgent Financial Times or even the
invigorated business section in The New York Times. As one Journal
staffer puts it: "The only question people were really interested
in is, 'What the fuck is going on?'"

In recent weeks, a rough portrait of Murdoch's Journal has emerged.
According to staffers who attended Thomson's presentations, he
explained that Murdoch wants the Journal to carry more news,
shorter stories, snappier headlines, and increasing political and
general-interest coverage (Thomson recently added four pages for
international stories to the paper's front section). In late April,
for example, the paper ran a pair of news stories on the
Mississippi River floods, which one staffer notes would have been
uncommon just months ago. When Murdoch made a surprise visit to the
Journal's D.C. bureau on March 7, he told staffers that the paper
should cover non-business stories like the Virginia Tech shooting
or the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Recently, to augment its
general-assignment reporting muscle, the Journal poached Los
Angeles Times reporter Stephanie Simon and New York Times reporter
Leslie Eaton. In a meeting with the Weekend Journal staff on April
25, Thomson also discussed the idea of tapping marquee writers,
such as Ian Buruma, to write long essays for the paper's Saturday
edition.

Murdoch has taken a keen interest in the Washington bureau. Already,
the bureau has added two additional staffers, hiring Susan Schmidt
and Elizabeth Williamson from The Washington Post. And, one week in
April, the Journal's veteran political reporter Jackie Calmes
scored three front-page bylines, a feat she says she had never
before accomplished in her 18-year career at the paper. "At the
Journal, the politics coverage was always the stepchild," Calmes
says. "Now I feel, for the first time, that I'm part of the core
coverage."

But the push for more spot news has left many staffers concerned
over the fate of the Journal's signature front-page features, which
are often investigative pieces running more than 2,000 words. In
the past, reporters often spent days crafting story memos and
shaping story ideas even before presenting them to editors. But, in
the conference call with the D.C. bureau on April 28, Thomson
signaled that story memos shouldn't run longer than 400 words,
leaving some to surmise he's less interested in long-form narrative.
During another telephone exchange with the Journal's bureau chiefs
the next day, Thomson dismissed speculation that Murdoch was
planning to kill the "A-Hed," the quirky human-interest columns
that have covered topics from the difficulty of spelling the word
"millennium" (during the y2k craze) to feuding hair salons in
Detroit. In response to a question about how far along Murdoch was
in his campaign to reinvent the Journal, Thomson said, "we're a six
to seven on a scale of ten," according to one participant on the
call.

Thomson has also raised the specter that there would soon be a
restructuring of the editing ranks. "They want a much more
reporter-driven paper," one staffer says. Historically, the Journal
has stood apart for its ranks of editors and bureau chiefs, who
closely supervised teams of reporters and shepherded copy up the
chain of command to New York. While Thomson didn't provide a
specific number, Journal staffers speculate that as many as 40 to
60 editors could be laid off or reassigned. A Dow Jones
spokesperson declined to comment.

Thomson has dealt with newsroom upheaval before. In March 2002,
Murdoch appointed him to run the Times of London, where he
refashioned the 217-year-old broadsheet into a hard-charging
tabloid. A native Australian like Murdoch, Thomson can be
disdainful of critiques from the journalistic establishment.

But he's also appeared to show disdain for the paper he's manning
now. After Murdoch named the 47-year-old publisher of the Journal
in December, some staffers sensed that Thomson approached the job
not with respect for the institution but with a kind of
condescension and a relish for changing it. "It seems as if he has
a grudge against the Journal. He tried to take us down a notch,"
one staffer says, recounting an April 28 meeting Thomson held with
the staff of the Money and Investing section.

In his call with the bureau chiefs on April 29, Thomson said that
Murdoch intends to announce a new managing editor within weeks, not
months. Thomson has told staffers that he wants a "renaissance man"
and a reporter with extensive overseas experience. Journal staffers
say that the leading internal candidates are D.C. bureau chief
Bussey, Money and Investing editor Nick Deogun, and assistant
managing editor Alan Murray.

Many staffers believe Murdoch will look externally to fill the top
newsroom slot. Last month, Gawker floated the idea that New York
Times mergers and acquisitions reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin is a
possible candidate. Many Journal staffers dismiss the rumor, and
the source of the idea turns out to be Vanity Fair media columnist
Michael Wolff, who is writing a book about Murdoch and the Journal.
(Wolff confirms that he had heard the tip "from a couple of people"
and passed it on.)

Still, whenever the announcement is made, staffers understand where
power resides in the newsroom. "No matter who is chosen," one
staffer says, "it's likely Thomson will be pulling the strings."

By Gabriel Sherman

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