The rap on The Wall Street Journal, especially among those who get edited for a living there, is that the editing process could use a little streamlining. It looks like that’s about to happen, judging by Thursday’s memo from top editor Robert Thomson. This is part of a series of personnel changes taking place at the Journal since News Corp bought Dow Jones last year, including the resignations of top editor Marcus Brauchli and top U.S. editor Bill Grueskin:

I am pleased to announce significant changes to the editorial leadership of The Wall Street Journal, changes which will expedite decision-making and give increased authority and responsibility to reporters and bureau chiefs. These changes will take place in tandem with the creation of a central news desk that will allow significantly enhanced co-operation between print, web and Newswires journalists, in New York and around the world. At the heart of our new structure will be a National, International and Enterprise Team, a triumvirate which will report directly to me and to whom the bureau chiefs will report.

Here are the moves among the most senior editors, effective next month:

- Matt Murray, general news editor, becomes national editor.

- Nikhil Deogun, Money & Investing section editor, becomes international editor.

- Mike Williams, page one editor, broadens duties to include investigative reporting, “A-heds” and “leders.”

Those three, Thomson wrote, will streamline commissioning and editing decisions get a central role in the production and presentation of copy for the paper and the website.

Other changes:

- Mike Miller, deputy managing editor, also becomes senior deputy managing editor and runs the paper in Thomson’s place if he is “otherwise engaged.”

- Cathy Panagoulias, assistant managing editor, becomes a deputy managing editor and gets more say in administrative support for bureau chiefs and hires.

- Jim Pensiero, vice president for special projects, becomes deputy managing editor for operations, and oversees the upcoming new publishing system (we heard it’s Methode), and runs the Journal’s move next year to News Corp headquarters in midtown Manhattan.

- Alix Freedman gets expanded authority over the paper’s ethical and journalistic standards.

- Alan Murray remains as executive editor of the online Journal.

- Dan Hertzberg, deputy managing editor, oversees the European and Asian editions

- Reg Chua becomes senior assistant managing editor and oversees the design team.

We’re not sure how this all will translate into streamlining and how this will give reporters and bureau chiefs more authority, but in all fairness, this hasn’t even gone into effect yet. We’re also curious about names not mentioned in the memo, like page one editor Laurie Hays. She didn’t return a phone call, but we’ll find out soon enough. She’s leaving, according to a second memo — going to Bloomberg as executive editor for company news. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

The appointment of Hays, who during a 23-year career at the newspaper was a Moscow-based correspondent, bureau chief in Atlanta and New York, National News Editor and, most recently, Deputy Managing Editor for Investigative Reporting, “brings exceptional experience in managing beat reporting to our 2,300 journalists in 65 countries,” said Matthew Winkler, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News. 

On a separate note, catch Rupert Murdoch’s comments in Cannes about making the Journal the best paper in the world. Article on the Guardian’s website.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang says Microsoft just isn’t interested in a full merger these days.

His comments, his most extensive to date on the Microsoft merger drama, back up what had been the talk around town — that chances of a full-fledged merger between the two had dimmed considerably. Yang, however, did signal his company remained open to a potential deal.

“We did not walk away from that proposal. Microsoft did,” Yang said during an on-stage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference.

“Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company, and we are talking about other things. We definitely have to understand what they’re proposing…they clearly have an interest in Yahoo, and we need to understand more,” Yang said.

A source familiar with the situation said last week that Microsoft has proposed buying Yahoo’s search business and taking a minority stake in the Web pioneer, but has stopped stopping short of reinitiating full merger negotiations.

Judging from the Wall Street Journal, Yang’s comments on stage reflect what’s happening between par putts on the golf course.  It reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yang played a round of golf over the weekend to discuss Yahoo’s search advertising business. But there was no indication that Microsoft still wanted to take over Yahoo.

Back onstage, meanwhile, Yang took some time to defend his track record after nearly one year as CEO and told the audience he was the right person for the job.

“I do think I am the best person to lead Yahoo,” Yang said.

Or, according to the New York Times… “Asked why he should be the leader to take the company forward, Mr. Yang said it was about his ‘passion’ and the fact that he still ‘bleeds purple,’ a reference to the distinctive color of the company’s logo.”

 Keep an eye on: 

• Havas Chairman Vincent Bollore said on Thursday he remained “calm” despite his latest failed attempt at securing two seats on the board of British rival Aegis (Reuters)
• The Wall Street Journal is about to step up its sports coverage, with the goal of turning its sports section into a “thinking man’s sports site,” the WSJ’s Adam Thompson told RotoNation
• The Screen Actors Guild and major studios returned to the bargaining table on Wednesday from a three-week recess in contract talks after another Hollywood union came to terms with producers on a new labor deal (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Time Warner Inc is slimming down, concentrating on the content side of the business (forgive the jargon, it’s just that’s what movies, magazines, TV programming are called these days).

The media giant has just unveiled its much-anticipated plans to spin off Time Warner Cable Inc, resulting in the complete legal and structural separation of the two companies.

Plans call for Time Warner to exchange its 12.4 percent interest in TW NY Cable Holding Inc, a subsidiary of Time Warner Cable, for 80 million newly issued shares of Time Warner Cable’s Class A common stock. Time Warner will pay a one time $10.9 billion dividend.

But financial details aside, what Time Warner has in mind is appeasing shareholders frustrated by the company’s stock price, and those calling for the company to do something with its AOL Internet unit. Presumably, with the cable plans out of the way, there will be more time to talk about AOL around the executive suite.

It’s the first big, splashy decision by Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive, and will have the company getting back to its roots — namely, the business of entertaining consumers on the screen and in pages of magazines. It should be interesting to watch.

Keep an eye on:

• Microsoft is not looking to bid to buy all of Yahoo but is in talks about other types of deals with the U.S. No. 2 search engine, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says (Reuters)
• Wall Street Journal Publisher Robert Thomson was named the paper’s new managing editor, taking the helm from Marcus Brauchli after he left last month under pressure (WSJ.com)
• Stuart Elliott writes that TV networks are reaching back in time to combat digital video recorders with the live commercial (NY Times)
• The head of Virgin Mobile USA told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit that he expects more consolidation in the U.S. telecommunications industry, including deals among providers who rent space on larger operator’s networks (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

It looks like Norman Pearlstine couldn’t resist the glamorous life of journalism. After two years in the private equity business at the Blackstone Group Carlyle Group (D’oh!), Pearlstine is joining Bloomberg LP as “chief content officer,” where, as Bloomberg said in a press release, he will work with “Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler to seek growth opportunities for its
television, radio, magazine and online products and to make the most of the
existing Bloomberg News operations.”

Pearlstine used to be the editor-in-chief of Time Inc for 11 years, and before that spent 23 years at The Wall Street Journal. More details on his CV, directly from the release :

He was the paper’s top news executive for nine years, serving as Managing Editor and then Executive Editor. He previously worked as the founding editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal/Europe, the first Managing Editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Tokyo bureau chief.

Pearlstine was founder of Smart Money magazine and worked as an Executive Editor of Forbes. He is the author of OFF THE RECORD: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources , published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007.

We don’t know what to make of this. Our immediate questions:

- Will he succeed Winkler, with whom he worked at the Journal?

- Will he put Bloomberg into M&A mode?

- Will he work on an effort to take Bloomberg LP public? (This idea has come up at least once before)

Pearlstine wasn’t available for comment, so we’ll just publish our questions here and invite comments, but Bloomberg’s top editorial executive, Matt Winkler, did  call. Here’s a bit of what we talked about:

Q: Why Pearlstine?

A: Nobody brings as much experience in so many different ways as Norm does… Our hope is that Norm can give us a lot more awareness and guidance on ways we can deliver [our news] well beyond the Bloomberg.

Q: When did you first meet him?

A: The meet-and-greet was probably in the halls of Dow Jones & Co when I arrived in 1980, and he was the national news editor at The Wall Street Journal. People would point him out to me as a really important person you ought to know, so maybe on the way to the men’s room I was able to introduce myself. (They started working closely together in 1982 when Pearlstine was planning the European edition of the WSJ and asked Winkler to go to London)

Q: What do you think of him?

A: I would say that everything that I know that’s worth anything in this business, the news business, I can attribute to Norm.

Q: Does his new job at Bloomberg mean that you will retire?

A: I would hope that I’m just getting started, actually.  The first 18 or so years went by really fast. I think the biggest opportunities are ahead of us. I can’t wait to go at them with Norm at my side.

Q: By the way, is there a hiring freeze at Bloomberg?

A: Not exactly. The management committee at Bloomberg… saw what was unfolding with the financial world — they could see what was coming last July — and said, ‘what we want to do for the coming year is effectively freeze the headcount.’ (This does not mean that they are not hiring as people leave, however) We’re determined to find and identify and bring to Bloomberg the most talented, skilled journalists we can.

(Reuters photo shows Pearlstine on the left in his role as president of the American Academy in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the middle and former U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Holbrooke on the right.)

(Disclaimer that you’ve probably read before: Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters are competitors in providing financial news and data.)

Latest change at The Wall Street Journal in Year One of the Murdoch Era: Venerable editorial page cartoon “Pepper… and Salt” is moving to the leisure and arts page.

We’re almost surprised that a Frankenstein-style mob hasn’t already taken pitchforks and torches to the Dow Jones building. After all, it’s one of the paper’s longer-running traditions. Heck, even the editor-in-charge of the cartoon has been at it for 58 years, The New York Times reports.

The Journal would not comment on why the 58-year-old cartoon was moved last week, or what the future holds for “Pepper … and Salt” in the new Murdoch era.

But Pepper’s move could make way for a more Murdochian brand of editorial cartoon, cartoonists said. (The Times reported.)

It turns out that the editors announced the change on April 22. Why didn’t we notice before? Because we take our Pepper… and Salt on the Internet.

(Photo: Reuters file)

Rupert Murdoch has earned the disdain of many Wall Street Journal staffers by saying their stories often are too long , especially some of the front-page juggernauts that take their time getting started.

While the page-one woes got all the attention, it looks like he and his crew were doing some editing elsewhere in the paper as well. The Heard on the Street column, which contains all sorts of interesting analysis and tips about buzz in the financial world, seems to be nearly half its former size some days.

Friday’s feature, “Lehman Brothers Seen As Cheap Recovery Bet ” by Peter Eavis and David Reilly, measured 431 words. Compare that to the (now weirdly prescient) “A Microsoft, Yahoo Tie-Up? ” that Robert Guth and Kevin Delaney wrote for the May 3, 2006, edition, at 1,224 words.

Typically, 800 to 1,200 words has been the breathing room for such stories, and maybe that will return on days when the news demands. Then again…

(Photo: Reuters)

Many Wall Street Journal watchers bemoan new owner Rupert Murdoch’s greater emphasis on political and general news coverage in the paper, but so far their evidence has been anecdotal.

Not anymore! The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) furnished numbers that give an exact percentage on the decrease in business news that gets on the front page of the nation’s most powerful business daily. Here’s an excerpt from the report:

Under the Murdoch regime, the single biggest change in front-page coverage occurred with politics and the presidential campaign. From Dec. 13, 2007 through March 13, 2008, coverage more than tripled, jumping to 18% of the newshole compared with 5% in the four months before the ownership change.

Since the front page has a finite amount of space, that increase in political coverage seems to have come largely at the expense of business news. In the Murdoch era, coverage of corporate America has plunged by more than half-to 14% of the front-page space from 30% in the months before the sale.

How low can he go before the Journal’s high net-worth readership bolts?

–Reporting by Robert MacMillan and Kenneth Li

(Photo: Graphic courtesy of PEJ)

Although Marcus Brauchli’s decision to resign as the top editor at The Wall Street Journal — announced on Tuesday — did not require the approval of the paper’s editorial integrity committee, they will step in when it’s time to hire the next one. 

The committee was designed to safeguard editorial independence by approving or vetoing the hiring choices in case its new owner, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, attempts to use his candidate to evade a solemn promise to keep the newspaper’s editorial dignity intact. It was one of the few safeguards left behind by its previous owners, the Bancroft family, as a condition for agreeing to the Murdoch’s takeover.

How effective will the committee actually be? We asked former Dow Jones board member Christopher Bancroft on Tuesday.

“That’s a lovely fantasy,” he said. “I told the family [at the time] that it’s window dressing. It is a lovely fantasy to imagine you can have a board that will take care of editorial issues at The Wall Street Journal.”

Jeff Bercovici and Portfolio.com got a similar comment from another family member, Jane Cox MacElree:

“I’m not surprised,” says Jane Cox MacElree, who controlled 15 percent of the family’s Dow Jones shares. “This is why I was not in favor of selling the paper to that man. Words mean nothing to him, unless they’re his.”

What do you think about the committee? Five people getting $100,000 to act out a fantasy, or five guardians of truth, justice and journalism?

(Photo: Reuters)

News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch dominated headlines again on Tuesday as not one, but at least three news items rippled across the media world.

As shareholders of rival paper The New York Times assemble on Tuesday morning for its annual meeting held at the company’s glittering new headquarters near Times Square, Murdoch took steps to accelerate the remaking of the Wall Street Journal in his image. WSJ is set to announce today the resignation of its managing editor Marcus Brauchli, who is leaving 11 months into the job and just a few months following the closing of Murdoch’s $5 billion purchase of Dow Jones. Murdoch appointee and publisher Robert Thomson will take over the top editorial spot in the interim, according to news reports. 

Meanwhile, News Corp deal makers across town appear poised to reach a deal to relieve real estate magnate and Tribune Chief Sam Zell of his Newsday newspaper for about $580 million to create a joint venture to combine Murdoch’s New York Post and other assets with Tribune’s paper. The Newsday deal is expected to cut about $50 million in annual losses at the Post. 

Then, quietly, Murdoch left the door open to a possible joint bid with Microsoft to buy Yahoo during a question and answer session at an event in which he was honored. Brauchli, the New York Times reported, attended the same event in Washington DC.

(Time.com) (WSJ) (NYT) (Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman may be conspiring to eliminate CBS Chief Les Moonves. (New York Post )
• Bambi’s getting company. Disney launches a new nature film label, Disneynature. (Reuters)
• MySpace snubs Fox for NBC News in new political site. (Hollywood Reporter)

(Photo: Reuters)

Some Wall Street Journal staff have been grousing lately over the paper’s increasing devotion to political and general news because they worry that it will move business news off the front page — something that seems inimical to a paper with the name “Wall Street” in it.

Not to worry, says Dow Jones & Co Chief Executive Les Hinton, business news is still what the Journal is all about. Here’s what Hinton said in an interview in the March 27 edition of The Australian (also owned by Murdoch’s News Corp):

“Whatever happens to the design, the key thing is we will put more national news in it and more political news in it,” he said.

“But that will be through additional pages because what we will never do is forsake its role of being, above all, the world’s business newspaper.

“That is its place in the world, it is the reason it’s prospered.”

And as for a free WSJ.com? Don’t bet on it:

“You’d never say never, but it doesn’t seem like a logical thing to do … The initial thought was if we were not having a pay barrier, we could grow very quickly and get the resulting advertising … That frankly was probably a little bit simplistic because … it has over a million subscribers. … Without going into detail, we get tens of millions in revenue from it.”

We came to a similar conclusion a few months ago.

(Photo: Reuters)