13 Months After Murdoch: The Journal Diaspora
MORE Off the Record
Last week, The Wall Street Journal’s managing editor, Robert Thomson, announced sweeping masthead changes—new people have been added, some familiar names dumped.
Laurie Hays, former deputy managing editor, is off to Bloomberg; Bill Grueskin, another deputy managing editor, is packing away for Morningside Heights and semi-retirement at the journalism school at Columbia University.
Other people left, too. Earlier this month, The Journal’s formidable Federal Reserve reporter, Gregory Ip, said that he was leaving for The Economist; a special writer from the San Francisco bureau, Rebecca Beckman, said she was leaving for Forbes.
Over the past 13.5 months, this has been a familiar parlor game at The Journal and in financial media circles: who’s leaving The Journal now?
Some of these moves happened directly because of Rupert Murdoch—they were pushed out by him, or staffers found him objectionable and left—some just happened for reasons unrelated. But it’s fair to say The Journal hasn’t experienced anything quite like this, well, ever.
It’s time for a roll call. Where have they gone, since May 1, 2007?
Portfolio:
Scott Paltrow, investigative writer at The Journal, now a contributing editor
Peter Waldman, investigative writer, now a senior writer
Dan Golden, Pulitzer-winning reporter, now a senior editor
Hilary Stout, editor of Personal Journal, now a senior editor
Doug Frantz, senior writer, agreed to join the L.A. Times but left for Portfolio
The New York Times:
Tara Parker-Pope, health writer
Brooks Barnes, reporter at The Journal, now a movie business reporter
Ron Lieber, left The Journal for Dow-Jones-IAC joint venture, now a columnist
Financial Times:
Henny Sender, senior special writer for Money & Investing, now an international financial correspondent
Orlando Sentinel:
Robert Block, Homeland Security reporter, now space editor
IAC:
Ed Felsenthal, deputy managing editor, now working with Tina Brown on her new project for Barry Diller (he originally left for Portfolio)
The Economist:
Greg Ip, senior special writer and Federal Reserve reporter, now U.S. economics editor
Fortune:
James Bandler, Pulitzer-winning reporter, will be U.S. economics editor
Forbes:
Anita Raghavan, London-based reporter, now European bureau chief
Rebecca Buckman, special writer at San Francisco bureau, now a staffer
BusinessWeek:
Paul Barrett, editor (only at The Journal briefly)
Reuters:
Robert MacMillan, reporter (also at The Journal briefly)
Bloomberg:
Laurie Hays, deputy managing editor, now executive editor for company news
Prospective Jobs:
Marcus Brauchli, former managing editor, top candidate for Washington Post executive editorship and currently a consultant for NewsCorp.
Academia:
Bill Grueskin, former deputy managing editor, becoming a dean at Columbia’s journalism school
Public relations gigs:
Sally Beatty, philanthropy reporter, joined Pfizer’s PR department
Kathryn Kranhold, GE reporter, joined Sard Verbinnen & Co.
Investment jobs:
Jonathan Clements, former personal finance columnist, now at Citigroup
Laurie Cohen, former senior special writer, going to a hedge fund.
jkoblin@observer.com
Not sure what the agenda is here but this is complete bullshit. Nothing in this article is accurate.
Everyone who went to Portfolio left because they had a wads of money thrown at them. Btw, they left before the takeover. Frantz never even worked at the Journal. He accepted an offer to go to Turkey and then jumped to Portfolio for some family reason. Should be pretty easy to call him to confirm if you could be bothered to actually report anything.
Brooks Barnes left for the NYT before the takeover.
Ron Lieber didn't even work for the Journal anymore when he went to the NYT. He was with the Diller joint venture which, by most accounts, is a complete disaster.
MacMillan is a train wreck as anyone who knows him will attest. He left before he got fired.
Brauchli, Grueskin, Hays, Beatty and Kranhold were pushed.
Henny Sender wanted to stay at the Journal in the end but had pissed so many people off with her waffling over the FT offer that Brauchli finally told her to fuck off.
Paul Barrett was hired from Business Week, stayed for a week and then realized he preferred his life at a dying weekly. Weird guy.
Jonathan Clements -- who?
Laurie Cohen -- went to hedge fund, ie needed money.
The comment about me is correct. I accepted an offer at the Journal, knowing full well that Rupert Murdoch would be the new owner. I had to withdraw for family reasons, which had nothing to do with Murdoch or the paper, which I think has improved in many ways.
Doug Frantz
Paul Barrett worked at the WSJ for many years before going to Business Week. He covered law.
Come on guys, think of this article as an old school WSJ leder. If the facts don't fit the premise, change the facts!
Sounds like News Corp. wrote the first comment. Yeah, some of your facts are off, but the mean-spirited way in which the first comment fobs off some pretty good people is over the top. Sounds like someone at News Corp. is trying to defuse the very real sense that anyone who made the Journal "the Journal" has left or wants to leave. Or maybe it's just some loser who is still there and can't get out b/c of the imploding industry and wants to throw feces at the wall to see what sticks.
You spelled Rebecca Beckman's name two different ways
Interesting list . . . and bravo for keeping track of all the recent moves reasonably accurately. But the assertion that "The Journal hasn’t experienced anything quite like this," just isn't so.
Go back to 1990-92, when Jim Stewart bolted for the New Yorker, Matt Winkler set up Bloomberg News and Susan Faludi left to write books. There were other departures, too -- but those three were epic.
Or consider the late days of the tech bubble when weekly going-away parties became the norm. Among writers, Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind left to try a dotcom/books blend. Among high-impact editors, Dennis Kneale went to Forbes; Steve Swartz left Dow Jones for Hearst; LA bureau chief Peter Gumbel tried a dot-com, etc.
The Journal always has attracted talented, restless people -- who do sometimes leave to try something new. The paper usually does an excellent job of renewing itself by hiring well and providing lots of fast-on-the-job training.
I don't have first-hand knowledge of whether the training/renewal process is still in good shape. If it is, there's no reason to ring alarm bells.
Very few people last more than 4-7 years at WSJ b/c it is such an unpleasant place to work. It's no surprise that people leave and continue to do so, as they often have big $$ thrown at them from outside parties to do work at places that may not be as prestigious, but are perhaps more pleasant and give someone more of a feeling of making a contribution.
The WSJ has long been a place where a thousand insects build an anthill, meaning that it's hard for anyone to feel they're really making a difference, establishing a writing style, making a name for themselves. It's a miserable place that has all the ingredients for low morale: backstabbing bosses and colleagues, aloof senior editors, low pay and long working hours, and an inability to say 'thank you' to anyone for a job well done. You might notice that most of the staff these days is 28-years-old and earns between $40,000 and $60,000. If you were earning those wages and anywhere near 40, you'd look to move on, too. After a while, who needs it?
David Rogers - perhaps the top reporter on Congress over the past couple decades or more - has gone to Politico. Nobody knows more about the appropriations process or about the long-standing relationships that make Congress work, or not work.
Thirty-five years ago, posted on my J-school bulletin board was a chart showing the best starting salaries for newspapers. As I recall, the Journal was $14K, but certainly was highest. The catch was, of course, that the Journal never ever hired J-school majors.
Wonder how they compare (and with whom) today?
O
Do I have to subscribe to the NY Observer to better understand the WSJ? Greg Ip is going to the Economist, which is nice since I subscribe, however the Economist never credits their writers. How will I know if I am getting my mandatory Ip reading?
A G de Silva
Oakland, CA 94619
JOHN KOBLIN WOULD DO FINE WRITING FOR PRAVDA.
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Yes, as another poster mentioned, my name is spelled incorrectly in the third paragraph--it's Buckman, not Beckman. It's right on second reference.
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