The Wall Street Journal

"I think that's the point at which you're all meant to clap."

Tina Gaudoin, editor in chief of WSJ., stood on stage at the Morgan Library on East 36th this morning. She had just presented the first issue of The Wall Street Journal's luxury insert, which debuts in this Saturday's edition of the paper.

The assembled crowd of journalists could be forgiven for not applauding as the cover and several pages of the magazine were revealed from beneath an awkwardly-draped scrim. They were too busy enjoying breakfast, which consisted parfait, cantaloupe with a sprig of mint, salmon filet, and a filo-crusted omelet topped with caviar.  read more »

With help from Romenesko, we now know that Gary Schwitzer at the University of Minnesota health news blog is shocked—shocked!—that NBC gave up so much time to the mouse-pill story. (A recap: A lazy mouse took two pills and showed increased endurance and fitness without doing any exercise.)

"It devoted more than 2 minutes out of its total of 22 minutes or so of news time to this story. We are at war. The economy is in the tank. No one can afford gas in the tank. But 2 minutes was given to this mouse research...With limited airtime, why was that an important nugget? Unless one's goal is to make drug company sponsors happy.  read more »

In the memo in which Dow Jones editor in chief Robert Thomson announced there would be job cuts at The Journal, he also said: "Our new budget includes an ambitious expansion of our web and international operations, both for the Journal and for Newswires, where we are adding 95 journalists over coming months."

So where exactly are those 95 people going? Not to The Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for The Journal, Bob Christie, told Media Mob that those new hires will all be assigned to Dow Jones news wires, not at The Journal. Mr. Christie reminds us, however, that wire copy can be used, of course, inside the pages of The Journal.

And what's the time frame for these hires? He said they'll start now, and there's no end date in mind. So, conceivably, Mr. Thomson can take as long as he wants to hire.

A story in the North Brunswick Sentinel has some valuable updates on the job cuts that are going down at The Wall Street Journal.

Bob Christie, spokesman for The Journal, tells the Sentinel that The Journal will cut 39 jobs from its South Brunswick office, and relocate 11 people to the paper's office in Manhattan (so the '50' number we were all using is a bit off). The 39 who are getting the ax will have a chance to "apply" for positions in New York. The majority of those people were from "the pagination desk and the copyediting desk," he said.

Mr. Christie also concretely lays out the new philosophy of The Journal that we've all been interpreting for a few months: Who needs editors?

"The goal is fewer editors, more reporters," Christie said.  read more »

What will become of 37-year-old NBC News correspondent David Gregory, wonders Felix Gillette, since "lame-duck presidents create lame-duck White House correspondents."

John Koblin looks at the new advertiser-friendly glossies on the horizon—WSJ from The Wall Street Journal, FW from The Washington Post, Manhattan and others—and notes, "the traditional, cozily amorphous job of the editor—rumpled visionary, bold procurer, acid social critic, lover of words!—is starting to look very different. Sort of...crisper... As envisioned by businesspeople, the New Editor seems a kind of bland, affable and well-connected creature … much like, well, a businessperson."

Is The New Yorker's James Wood becoming a guru for writers? Leon Neyfakh checks out the tips offered in Mr. Wood's new book, How Fiction Works, and asks, "Who will heed them? And will the fact that Mr. Wood has laid them out so plainly in this succinct volume—something few literary critics, to say nothing of book reviewers, have the heart to do these days—increase the likelihood that aspiring writers will eventually absorb and adhere to his standards?" Plus: David Carr.

Plus: Madonna's brother... Issac Mizrahi... The New Old Gays.

It's a late, sleepy summer Friday, but New York Times online editor Jon Landman has some choice words for Rupert Murdoch, Robert Thomson and The Wall Street Journal's online editor, Alan Murray, this afternoon.

Well, technically speaking, he doesn't name any of those people in his weekly memo, or the paper itself, but in his weekly briefing designed to discuss accomplishments for nytimes.com, he comes out swinging! Namely, he says wsj.com has accomplished nothing!

As Mr.Landman writes:

There's some financial newspaper out there, on Wall Street or maybe in midtown, we aren't sure. There's new ownership, it seems, some rich guy who says he wants his paper to be more like ours.  read more »

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Deputy managing editor Jim Pensiero of The Wall Street Journal just sent an e-mail out to the enitre staff announcing, or clarifying, the roles of everyone on the new masthead of the newspaper working below Robert Thomson, whose title of managing editor is the traditional Journal title for the person on top of the pile.

There are four of them besides Mr. Thomson: Nik Deogun, Mike Miller, Matt Murray Mike Williams.

From the e-mail:

Senior DME/Features/Mike Miller

Key tasks: Senior deputy to the managing editor; responsible for features sections, including Personal Journal, Weekend Journal, Journal Reports and the WSJ magazine.

Works with: National, International and Page One editors.  read more »

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The Wall Street Journal announced this afternoon it will close down most of its editorial operations in South Brunswick, which will mean the elimination of about 50 jobs. In addition, the newly created "news hub" for The Journal in New York will be responsible for editing all content at The Journal--whether it's in the paper, online or in mobile.

In a memo, managing editor Robert Thomson writes, "I realize that this reorganization will be a challenge operationally and, for some of you, personally. It is obvious that the South Brunswick team created in the wake of the September 11 attack is bearing the brunt of these changes.  read more »

As you may already know, yesterday was a dark day for the newspaper industry: Layoffs at The Los Angeles Times; buyouts at The Wall Street Journal; the departure of The Chicago Times' editor-in-chief; The New York Times' stock price dipped to a decade-low as shares of McClatchy, Gannett, and News, Corporation also took hits.

Today, the hits just keep on coming. Some lowlights after the jump:  read more »

When some future historian writes the book about how newspapers went the way of the steel industry (if there are books in the future, of course), today could be the lede:

• The Los Angeles Times notified 150 newsroom staffers that they're getting fired today, months after they already cut dozens of jobs; the paper's publisher "stepped down," and will be replaced on an interim basis by Randy Michaels, a man with a career in radio.
• The New York Times' stock dropped another 3 percent today, falling to $13.21 and, at one point, hitting another decade-low of $13.00
• The Wall Street Journal is buying out half a dozen staffers
• The Chicago Tribune's editor-in-chief, Ann Marie Lipinski, is resigning, and wrote in her farewell memo, "it would be inaccurate to attribute it to any one event." This comes less than a week after the Tribune announced it would cut 80 positions from its newsroom, the second wave of cuts this year for the paper.
• McClatchy's stock went down 3.14 percent, Gannett down 0.9 percent, News Corp down 0.77 percent.

Donors to Barack Obama expect his campaign to raise just over $30 million in June, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Even if that estimate is a tactial lowball, the number is well below the astronomical figures reported during the primary. And when contrasted with the $22 million June haul the McCain campaign reported yesterday, and the additional $95 million McCain campaign aides hope to raise by the end of the summer through the RNC and state victory accounts, it seems to diminish the notion of the Obama campaign's Internet fund-raising operation as a bottomless well.

And if the $30 million number is at all accurate, it could prompt questions not only about whether the substantial editorial hit Obama suffered for his reversal on the issue of public funding was worth it, but also about the significance of the super bundler, a species that some of Obama's own bundlers said had been put out to pasture by the Internet tidal wave.  read more »

Brian Stelter reports in The Times today that The Journal's personal tech columnist Walt Mossberg will join up with the Fox Business Network as a contributor.

But the whole deal is a tricky one. The Journal still has an agreement with CNBC that runs through 2012, and it's a contract that might prevent Journalists from appearing too regularly on FBN.

A 15-year contract that extends until 2012 between CNBC, the dominant business channel, and The Journal prevents many reporters from appearing on Fox Business programs. The News Corporation has not tried to unwind itself from the contract, at least not publicly. But the scope of the agreement is limited, and as the announcement about Mr.  read more »

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John Koblin does a post-Murdoch Wall Street Journal roll call of all those writers and editors who've left and says, "it’s fair to say The Journal hasn’t experienced anything quite like this, well, ever." Plus: The Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein launches a blog.

Felix Gillette wonders who will be replacing Tim Russert as NBC's Washington D.C. Bureau Chief. Whoever fills that role "must continuously grapple with producers in New York to make sure his reporters get plenty of airtime on the morning and evening newscasts."

Leon Neyfakh tells the tale of Reif Larsen, a "28-year-old Columbia M.F.A. student [who] wrote a novel about a whimsical child from Montana who likes maps, and suddenly all kinds of famous editors in New York were calling his agent, Denise Shannon, and telling her they really wanted to publish it.  read more »

Last week, The Wall Street Journal’s managing editor, Robert Thomson, announced sweeping masthead changes—new people have been added, some familiar names dumped.

Laurie Hays, former deputy managing editor, is off to Bloomberg; Bill Grueskin, another deputy managing editor, is packing away for Morningside Heights and semi-retirement at the journalism school at Columbia University.

Other people left, too. Earlier this month, The Journal’s formidable Federal Reserve reporter, Gregory Ip, said that he was leaving for The Economist; a special writer from the San Francisco bureau, Rebecca Beckman, said she was leaving for Forbes.  read more »

This morning in a classroom at the CUNY School of Journalism, Robert Thomson gave his first public speech as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal at a kick-off event for a conference for South Asian Journalists Association.

In Mr. Thomson’s remarks, and in a question-and-answer session that followed, he said The Journal would most likely move to News Corp.’s headquarters next spring, wsj.com would be redesigned in the fall and that, yes, The Journal is still a business paper.

“Is The Wall Street Journal a business newspaper? Of course it is. The first thing we did was increase the international coverage.  read more »

There's a big shake-up at The Wall Street Journal! There are new masthead additions, and revised roles for others.

Robert Thomson sent out a newsroom-wide memo this afternoon announcing that Mike Miller, currently a deputy managing editor at the paper, will become his No. 2. Thomson writes that he "will be responsible for editing the paper if I am otherwise engaged."

There are three new deputy managing editors. Nik Deogun, currently the Money & Investing editor, will become the international editor, while Matt Murray becomes national editor. Mike Williams, already a Page One editor, will retain his role.

Noticably absent from the memo is John Bussey, Washington bureau chief, who was reportedly a leading candidate to replace Marcus Brauchli.  read more »

On Paper Cuts, The New York Times' book blog, Barry Gewen writes about Mark Bowden's recent Atlantic article about Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of The Wall Street Journal and his desire to kneecap the paper of record.

Mr. Gewen, you may recall, revealed the inner-workings of The Times Book Review at Harvard last year. Among his revelations: the names and roles of several NYTBR editors, how they choose what books to review, and some intramural gripes like "the magazine pays the salaries of all the rest of us. It makes money hand over fist. And you can see it in the physical plan.  read more »

Two weeks after Robert Thomson took over as editor of the Wall Street Journal, the first masthead editor is leaving the paper. Bill Grueskin, one of the paper's five deputy managing editors, is leaving the Journal behind for a job working directly under Nicholas Lemann at the Columbia Journalism School.

Sources at the paper said it was Mr. Grueskin who wanted to undergo an investigative piece to report why Marcus Brauchli suddenly resigned from the paper. Just over a month later, Mr. Grueskin is gone too.  read more »

Rupert Murdoch spoke at The D Conference this week, and laid out more non-specific but interesting plans for The Journal.

For months, it's been speculated that Murdoch cares more about figuring out the actual structure of the paper, and then he'll get down to the dirty business of assigning the right reporters to the right assignements, and signing a few superstars.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones are less than a year away from moving their editorial departments to midtown. Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton said that the whole thing is pretty "fluid" but it's likely that the Journal--and the Dow Jones news wires--will pack their bags for the News. Corp castle at 1211 Avenue of the Americas by February or March of next year.  read more »

We just spoke to Tom Bray, the de facto spokesman of the Wall Street Journal's special committee for independence that has approval rights over new announcements for a managing editor.

"We approved it today," he said.

He said that Mr. Thomson was approved by the committee unanimously and that it was a rolling vote conducted by e-mail and conference call. Mr. Thomson could have been approved with a majority 3-2 for the five-person committee.

He said that the committee was first informed about Mr. Thomson "over a week ago."  read more »

We just caught up with Robert Thomson, who, it was just announced, will be the newspaper's next managing editor, on the phone. "I feel privileged," he said. "I'm looking forward with much excitement to making the Journal, and its news wires, which is the greatest news organization in the world, even greater."

He will move down to the newsroom's ninth floor tomorrow, and will take over chief editing duties over the paper immediately.  read more »

Two nights ago, Rupert Murdoch told The Observer that he went "a little too far" by declaring that his purchase of Newsday was a certainty, which he boldly told reporters and investors earlier in the week. This afternoon, he has withdrawn his offer.  read more »

For the past two weeks, Robert Thomson, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has been busy not being the paper’s editor.

It hasn’t been easy. Since April 22, when Marcus Brauchli resigned as the newspaper’s managing editor, Mr. Thomson, who was forced to describe himself in an interview with The New York Times as the interim “head of content” for the paper, has had nine meetings (in person and on conference calls) to soothe the fraying nerves of his orphaned editorial staff.

“There was a real panic here for a few days when Marcus left,” said one reporter.  read more »

When Robert Thomson met with the reporters and editors of the Wall Street Journal's Money & Investing desk last week, he wasn't shy about at least one thing he planned to tear up from the old regime.

Namely, the plot to institute "Journal 3.0" that was put forward by former publisher Gordon Crovitz.

The initiative was meant to populate the front page with more "what-it-means" stories, on the assumption that like The New Yorker, the Journal would not become a first-read for straight national news.  read more »

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the original CNBC report that Rupert Murdoch was interested in buying Dow Jones at $60 per share. And one year later, nothing seems to have calmed down at the Wall Street Journal.  read more »

Given more time, Thomas Bray, one of the members of the special committee to oversee editorial independence at the Journal, would have liked to question Marcus Brauchli. There are two stories today: one in the Journal, and the other in the Times, airing the committee's grievances, but those complaints amount to little.  read more »

The Times has a mini-profile of Journal publisher Robert Thomson this morning. Here's what we learned:  read more »

And how was your day? If you're a media critic or reporter, it was anything but slow.

Starting last night when "Time Reporters" broke the news that Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli would be leaving the paper followed closely by The Wall Street Journal's Merissa Marr reporting Sam Zell's Tribune Co. was "closing in on an agreement to sell its Long Island newspaper Newsday" to her paper's parent company, News Corp., this was a day of constant scoops and fast (sometimes loose) seat-of-the-pants analysis.  read more »

Moments after Dow Jones sent out a press release announcing the departure of Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli, the following note went out to all staff on his behalf:

To the Staff:

A year ago, I was appointed managing editor, and we set off together on a great journey. We faced uncertainty about our ownership, inclement conditions in our industry and consensus that change was necessary. And so we chose a path of transformation.  read more »

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The deal has apparently been struck between outgoing Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli and his News Corp. overlord, Rupert Murdoch. This press release just came in:

Marcus Brauchli Steps Down as Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal

Accepts Position as Consultant to News Corporation  read more »

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Media Mob has learned that Washington lawyer and champion Beltway book broker Robert Barnett is representing soon-to-be-former Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli in his severance-package negotiations with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Mr. Barnett has, in the last year, brokered massive book deals for political heavyweights Karl Rove, Ted Kennedy, and Tony Blair.

They're working fast: the terms of Mr. Brauchli's departure from the Journal, which presumably depend upon his agreement, could be announced formally by News Corp. as soon as this afternoon, according to our sources at the paper.

So how's that editorial independence board for The Wall Street Journal doing? And will they do anything about Marcus Brauchli's departure?

"I'm really not going to comment on any of it," said Tom Bray, one of the five members of the committee and the de facto spokesman.

When asked if the board has met, he said that it has, but refused to speak about whether they had any say--or any knowledge--about Marcus Brauchli's departure.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports today that after Marcus Brauchli formally announces his resignation—which could happen later today—he'll be replaced on an interim basis by publisher Robert Thomson. Thereafter, a search for a full-time replacement "would begin shortly, with candidates coming from both inside and outside the paper." The Journal also reports that Mr. Brauchli would stay on with Dow Jones either as a "consultant or an executive."  read more »

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sam Zell's Newsday is close to being sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million. The story is sourced to people familiar with the situation, and that both parties "have informally agreed on key aspects, including the price, structure and governance."  read more »

Newsweek gives big play this week to Rupert Murdoch's early maneuvers at The Wall Street Journal. Point: He's the general who has declared war on The New York Times.

This is something we've been talking about around here for a while now, and rumors of war aside, we haven't quite heard the first shot around here.

That doesn't change much with this week's story, but there's still lots of juice here.

Here are the highlights:  read more »

When The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on April 9 that “barring a change” Katie Couric and CBS News were “likely” to part ways and that it “could” happen after the election (those are just the qualifiers from its headline and subhead), Matthew Drudge picked it up quick as lightning on the Drudge Report.

After a few hours, the story, sourced to “people close to Couric” and executives, was taken out from behind a paid firewall, and WSJ.com watched the traffic—“definitely” one of its biggest hits of the month—roll in.  read more »

Filling out the rumors floated in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, today the New York Times reports that a “wide-ranging discussion” about Katie Couric’s future took place among CBS executives back in February:

 read more »

Reporter James Bandler is leaving The Wall Street Journal for Fortune Magazine, Media Mob has learned. Mr. Bandler was a part of the team of Journal reporters that won the public service Pulitzer last year for stories on an investigation into backdated stock options for business executives. Mr. Bandler was also a critic of Rupert Murdoch, and was one of several reporters who wrote a letter to the Bancrofts pleading that the family not sell the paper.

On Thursday, Wall Street Journal staffers received a memo from managing editor Marcus Brauchli and books director Roe D'Angelo announcing a new book-leave policy.

It seemed simple enough: if reporters want to write a book they need to inform editors ahead of time; the paper can start providing some marketing help—all pretty pro forma stuff. Mr. Brauchli wrote that the change allows the paper to "protect our interests in books based on Journal reporting."  read more »

Tara Parker-Pope, who blogs about health and writes a health column for The New York Times, has sold an advice book on healthy marriages to Dutton, Publisher's Weekly reports.  read more »

David Carr tackles the changing Wall Street Journal this morning and writes about the paper's sudden infactuation with politics. Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli concedes to Mr. Carr that there have been more political stories this year, but that's because it's such an extraordinary year (simple enough). But Mr. Brauchli also offered this interesting quote:  read more »

The world was ready for cries of “What fresh hell is this!” from The Wall Street Journal when news broke this week that Rupert Murdoch was planning to move his newest acquisition into his 45-story tower at Sixth Avenue and 48th st