Dow Jones European Executive Resigns

The News Corporation, already dealing with the fallout from a phone-hacking scandal in Britain, has suffered another blow to its European operations.

The publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, a unit of News Corporation, resigned after an internal investigation revealed an agreement between the paper’s circulation department and a Netherlands-based company that was featured positively in two articles. In an e-mail to his staff, the publisher, Andrew Langhoff, who is also managing director of the European, African and Middle East operations of Dow Jones & Company, said he would leave his post immediately. “Because the agreement could leave the impression that news coverage can be influenced by commercial relationships, as publisher with executive oversight, I believe that my resignation is now the most honorable course,” Langhoff wrote in the e-mail. Dow Jones said on that its editors in New York learned of the circulation agreement with the consulting firm Executive Learning Partnership and began an inquiry. That agreement prompted two favorable articles in The Wall Street Journal Europe’s Special Reports section.