Thomson named as top Wall Street Journal editor

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp's Rupert Murdoch appointed Robert Thomson as the top editor of The Wall Street Journal, the company said on Tuesday, succeeding Marcus Brauchli, who resigned under pressure last month.

News Corp also apologized to a committee charged with overseeing editorial independence at the Journal, saying it should have consulted with the group before finalizing Brauchli's resignation.

Thomson, whom Murdoch installed as publisher when he bought Dow Jones & Co Inc for $5.6 billion last year, also has been named as editor-in-chief of the News Corp subsidiary.

"Mr. Thomson's outstanding career as a financial journalist, foreign correspondent and editor, equips him perfectly for the position," Murdoch said in a statement.

The committee designed to safeguard the Journal's integrity voted unanimously to approve Thomson.

"No issues came to our attention that would prevent us from approving him," the committee's chief, Tom Bray, told Reuters. "He is a man obviously of considerable experience in journalism and as an editor."

In an op-ed article to be published in Wednesday's edition of the Journal and obtained by Reuters, the committee said it was concerned with Thomson's role in Brauchli's departure and that Thomson told the committee that "he now realizes that the way this was handled was a mistake."

Thomson was not immediately available for comment.

Thomson, 47, previously was the editor of the Times of London, which News Corp owns. He also was editor of the U.S. edition of the Financial Times, which is owned by Pearson PLC.

He will oversee the news section at the Journal and editorial operations at Dow Jones Newswires. News Wires Managing Editor Neal Lipschutz will report to Thomson. Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot will report to Dow Jones & Co Chief Executive Les Hinton, who will become publisher of the Journal. That is the job that Thomson holds now.

At the Journal, Thomson is widely credited by reporters and other staff with fulfilling Murdoch's mandate to introduce more political and nonbusiness news into the paper, as well as to shorten the lengths of a number of its stories.

Brauchli, who is staying on at News Corp as a consultant, was not immediately available for comment.

The editorial integrity committee had criticized the way that Brauchli left the paper, saying in late April that News Corp failed to meet the letter and spirit of its agreement with the group.

The agreement says the committee must approve the hiring and firing of top Journal editors, but it does not give them authority to approve resignations, which is how Brauchli said he was leaving the paper.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton said News Corp believes it acted in accordance with the agreement and had no intention of subverting the committee's role.

"In hindsight, we recognize it would have been more appropriate to have advised the committee in advance of reaching an agreement with Mr. Brauchli," Hinton said.

"We have apologized to the committee members and undertaken that in the future, we will consult with it and seek approval of the committee before taking any action with respect to an editor that could result in a material change in an editor's duties, responsibilities or reporting relationships or the departure of that editor," Hinton said.

The committee's members include Bray, a former Detroit News editorial page editor; former Associated Press Chief Executive Louis Boccardi; former Chicago Tribune Editor Jack Fuller and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Nicholas Negroponte, who runs the One Laptop per Child foundation.

(Editing by Gary Hill and Andre Grenon)