Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. named Robert Thomson managing editor of The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, following the departure last month of Marcus Brauchli after less than a year on the job.Thomson had been brought in last December as publisher of the Journal, with broad editorial oversight of paper, after News Corp. bought the Journal's parent company Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion. Thomson, a former editor of News Corp.'s The Times newspaper in London, had been widely seen as the likely candidate to succeed Brauchli.

Brauchli didn't comment publicly about his departure at the time but said in a statement that he had come to believe that "the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing."

Since closing the purchase of the paper, News Corp. has been moving quickly to reshape the Journal with a greater focus on general and political news and to compete more aggressively with The New York Times for national readers and advertisers.



Les Hinton, the chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., will assume Thomson's role as publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Paul Gigot, the editor of the Journal's editorial page, will report to Hinton.

News Corp. said in a statement that Thomson's appointment was unanimously endorsed by a special committee tasked with ensuring the editorial independence and quality of The Wall Street Journal. That group must sign off an any removal or appointment of the Journal's managing editor and certain other top editorial roles at Dow Jones.

Earlier, that committee had expressed disappointment that it hadn't been notified promptly of Brauchli's decision to resign. News Corp. has said it intended keep the committee closely informed in the process of finding a successor for Brauchli.

The committee had been put in place last year as a condition for News Corp. to buy Dow Jones, following concerns from some members of the Bancroft family, which had controlled Dow Jones for more than a century, about keeping the Journal free from corporate interference under Murdoch. Murdoch has called those concerns unjustified.

"In hindsight, we recognize it would have more been appropriate to have advised the committee in advance of reaching an agreement with Mr. Brauchli," Hinton said in a statement.

Hinton added that the company has apologized to the committee's members and pledged to consult with them before doing anything to materially change an editor's responsibilities or reporting relationships.

In his new role, which he will assume immediately, Thomson will also be editor-in-chief of Dow Jones, with Neal Lipschutz, the managing editor of Dow Jones Newswires, a real-time financial reporting service, reporting to him.

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