-By Lucia Moses

In his latest high-profile move since buying The Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones & Co., Rupert Murdoch May 20 named Robert Thomson as managing editor of the Journal and editor in chief of Dow Jones.
 
Thomson succeeds Dow Jones vet Marcus Brauchli, who resigned in April after less than a year on the job and a few months after Murdoch took over the company. Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones, will add the publisher title to his existing duties.
 
Thomson was widely seen as Brauchli’s successor for the top newsroom job. He was tapped in December to be publisher of Dow Jones and had been editor of News Corp.’s The Times of London since March 2002. Before that, he was managing editor of the U.S. edition of Pearson’s The Financial Times. Earlier in his career, he served as a foreign correspondent in Beijing and Tokyo.
 
Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., has said he wanted to make the Journal more competitive with The New York Times, and in recent months, the paper has been putting more emphasis on sports and political news. Reports stated that Brauchli was unable to find a middle ground between the Journal’s old guard and Murdoch.
 
In a statement released May 20, Dow Jones said that a special committee that was set up after the News Corp. takeover to preserve the Journal’s editorial independence and which was given authority to sign off on the appointment or removal of the top editor, had unanimously endorsed Thomson’s appointment.
 
The special committee had released a statement last month saying it disapproved of the way Brauchli’s resignation was handled, with the committee learning of it after the fact.   
 
In the May 20 statement, Hinton said the company apologized to committee members for not advising them before reaching an agreement with Brauchli over his exit. In the future, he said, the company would consult with the committee before making a major change regarding an editor’s duties, reporting relationships or departure.