Murdoch to put his personal stamp on Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal

07 December 2007

News Corp's Leslie Hinton will be the new Dow Jones CEO and London Times editor Robert Thomson is to head The Wall Street Journal, as Murdoch shakes up a venerable old empire.

Dow Jones chief executive Richard F Zannino said on Thursday 6 December that he would resign as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp installs a new management team that will be led by veteran company executive Leslie Hinton and London Times editor Robert Thomson.

News Corp''s $5 billion-plus acquisition of Dow Jones is to be approved by shareholders at a meeting next Thursday. It will end nearly a century of control by the Bancroft family. (See: Murdoch bags Dow Jones)

Exodus
Zannino''s resignation is the first of a likely series of high profile executive departures from the company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Barron''s and Dow Jones Newswires.

Among the executives expected to leave are Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, Dow Jones chief financial officer Bill Plummer, general counsel Joseph A Stern and corporate communications chief Linda Dunbar. Crovitz is expected to continue writing a column for the Journal''s editorial page.(See: Dow Jones appoints new GMs for The Wall Street Journal Online, Barron''s Online and MarketWatch.com)

Thomson will oversee the editorial operations of Dow Jones, and report to Hinton, who is executive chairman of News International in London, and whose ties to Murdoch go back four decades.

Rupert's reputation
Murdoch has a reputation for getting directly involved in the newspapers he owns, and is likely to take a hands-on role at the new acquisition. He hasn''t shied away from expressing his views about how the venerable Journal should change under his ownership.