Still, what's most intriguing here is the factoid in The New York Times that Brauchli resisted eliminating editors to hire reporters. Now anyone who runs a newsroom knows there's a hard-to-hit optimal balance between these two groups; I'm sure it's a balance folks over at the fiscally challenged Times are contemplating daily. And it's a balance that's under particular pressure these days.
At the risk of insulting reporters, one of the keys to why the Journal has long been such a powerful vehicle is its cadre of skilled, sophisticated, veteran and powerful editors. Now I'm sure there were -- and are -- real louses and losers among that group, and the Journal also boasts a venerable tradition of world-class reporters from whence its editors most-often emerged. But reporters are, by definition, individual; editors are collective. Reporters, even as a group, will be highly variable as writers; editors, if they're skilled, will be able to transform pedestrian copy into a collective voice. Reporters are about freedom of inquiry; editors are about discipline and standards. It takes two to tango.
The Journal has long been an editors' paper, as evidenced by the fact that its page-one and "A-hed" editors developed the kind of reputations most subeditors at other papers (and magazines) could only dream about. And the WSJ has a distinctive voice, tightly written, dense, efficient, lively, with carefully constructed context -- the famous nut graf long associated with WSJ style. Will that continue? Who knows?
Now the fact is, in the age of blogs and everyman-a-pundit, the kind of careful, obsessive editing long associated with the WSJ feels a little passe. Editors are often blamed as obstructionists between reporters and readers, little autocrats trying to control the news. Standards of style are viewed as old fashioned. What matters is the scoop, the flash, the comment, the immediate sensation; presentation, care, context and orchestration take on a secondary quality, like the chrome on an old Buick. For someone like Murdoch (or his publisher Robert Thomson) who wants to make fast, fundamental changes, editors may well appear to be an impediment to progress. (The British style of journalism also features much less line editing than U.S. style. This is not good or bad, just different. Thomson spent years at the Financial Times, which features a much looser, more discursive style than the WSJ.) And truth be told, the rise of blogging and punditry at the WSJ had already eroded the reach and control of editors. The Journal's blogs simply don't read like the print product, which may be good or bad, but it's certainly different.
Did Brauchli fall over the issue of replacing reporters with editors? That's still unclear. What we do know is that one of Murdoch's first complaints about the paper was the length of its leaders. That's a comment about editing, not reporting. - Robert Teitelman
See story from The New York Times
The news that Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli is leaving his post after only four months cohabitating with Rupert Murdoch (pictured) comes as a surprise, if only because of the short time period. Even a rocky marriage usually lasts longer than that. 
