Committee Criticizes Move at Journal

That didn't take long. A special oversight committee created to protect the editorial integrity of The Wall Street Journal has decided the ouster of paper's top editor last week did not live up to conditions that the News Corporation had agreed to when it bought Dow Jones & Company in December. The committee has the power to block the firing or hiring of the newspaper’s managing editor. But the editor, Marcus W. Brauchli, was not fired; he resigned on April 22, albeit under pressure, and accepted a role as a consultant to the News Corporation. The committee members were informed the day before that the company and Brauchli had agreed that he would leave. “Although our charter does not directly envision a process for dealing with a resignation, Committee members expressed the view that learning of the Brauchli matter after the fact failed to meet the letter and the spirit of the agreement,” the panel’s chairman, Thomas J. Bray, said in a statement. “Under the agreement, the committee has the duty and responsibility to approve or disapprove such actions.” The committee “decided that there was no practical way to ‘unresign’ Brauchli and start the process over,” Mr. Bray said. But he said the panel “intends to exercise fully its role in the approval of a successor managing editor and to take the steps necessary to prevent a repeat of the process it has just been through.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/business/media/30journal.html?ref=todayspaper
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