Handicapping the 'WSJ' Editor Search

Rupert Murdoch says he'll hire a new managing editor to replace Marcus Brauchli at The Wall Street Journal in "a couple weeks, maybe three" -- and that was a week ago. But if he's serious -- more serious than when he assured analysts he was "a couple of days" from securing a deal for Newsday -- he's doing an awfully good job of keeping the search under wraps.

That Robert Thomson would have a high-ranking editorial role at the Journal was the worst-kept secret in publishing, preceding, by months, Murdoch's official purchase of the paper. This time around, however, only a few names have surfaced, all inside candidates -- and no one seems to think there's any real chance Murdoch will go with an insider, given what happened with Brauchli, and given various offhand comments he has made to people at the paper.

"The senior people would all be surprised if it's an insider," says one knowledgeable Journal source. "He had an insider with whom he had a relatively non-contentious relationship, and it didn't work out. It's got to be somebody that Murdoch's dead-bang comfortable with. He wants to get the Murdoch mind-meld going, and for that he needs someone who will do the things he wants before he even thinks of them."

While Alan Murray, the Journal's online executive editor, Nik Deogun, editor of the Money & Investing section, and D.C. bureau chief John Bussey are all considered viable candidates, none can boast the mind-meld. (All three are mentioned in this New Republic story.) Other top editors -- deputy managing editors Bill Grueskin, Alix Freedman, Mike Miller and Dan Hertzberg -- are seen by many as too associated with the old regime to be potential successors -- the sorts of figures who, if anything, will be targeted for removal if and when Murdoch and Thomson conduct their long-rumored purge of the editing ranks. And that might not be entirely unwelcome. "Seeing the Marcus thing play out is destroying their hopes," says a former editor who keeps close ties to the paper. "Their thinking has to be along the lines of, 'How do I get fired?'" (Under the Dow Jones Separation Plan for Senior Management, editors who get terminated not for cause in the first two years following a change of ownership get from 12 to 18 months' worth of salary and benefits*; perhaps that explains why the purge has yet to begin.)

"It would seem that any internal person would feel weird being the designated lackey," says one editor.

The smart money, therefore, is on Murdoch making his hire from within the large News Corp. farm team, or perhaps from another reach of Dow Jones. (One source mentioned Barron's editor Edwin Finn, who is said to be friendly with Murdoch). Should he go outside the company, one name that's been mentioned recently is Will Lewis, editor in chief of the London Daily Telegraph. Lewis has many qualities of Murdoch's ideal candidate: business acumen (he made waves as a deal reporter for the Financial Times in the 1990s), impatience for change (the youngest editor of the Telegraph ever, he has focused on dragging it into the digital age), familiarity with the Murdoch ethos (he was business editor of the Sunday Times for three years) and a friendship with Thomson (he was quoted praising him in a recent New York Times profile).

So he's perfect. But Lewis says he hasn't been approached about the job.

*Correction, 12:54 p.m.: An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated that upper-tier editors who are terminated not for cause following a change of control receive two years' worth of salary and benefits. A Dow Jones spokesman says editors at the levels in question would actually receive severance packages of 12 to 18 months.