Murdoch’s ‘Head of Content’

In a long career, Robert Thomson has left a trail of happy reporters in his wake — at The Financial Times and more recently at The Times of London, where the newsroom under his guidance was, in the words of a former colleague, “the happiest place to work on Fleet Street.”

He’s got his work cut out for him at The Wall Street Journal.

Last Wednesday morning Mr. Thomson, who is 47, walked into the morning news meeting at The Journal, his first day as the de facto editor in the wake of the resignation of the managing editor, Marcus W. Brauchli, whom Mr. Thomson has known since the 1980s when the two were foreign correspondents in Beijing,

With editors assembled around the table, Mr. Thomson said the paper would not rush to replace Mr. Brauchli, and he assured the group that people who thought the paper was straying from its traditions were misinformed. Then, he said, he offered something no reporter or editor could resist: more space for more words.

Mr. Thomson said that the News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and which bought the newspaper’s parent company, Dow Jones, last year for close to $5 billion, would invest $6 million a year to add four pages for international news.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28thomson.html?ex=1367035200&en=c65adb6620234cf3&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink