Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker sent out the following announcement on Tuesday:
Our colleague, Joann S. Lublin, has announced her decision to retire after nearly 47 years at The Wall Street Journal. Joann has been a model of business reporting, known for her rare talent for sourcing, scoops of consequence, a tireless work ethic and boundless generosity in collaborating with hundreds of reporters over generations.
Joann’s byline is one of the fixtures of The Wall Street Journal. She has earned several thousand of them over the years, writing about many of the biggest stories in recent business history as well as many of the boldface names and leaders in the global economy. Her source list is a Who’s Who of prominent figures, many of whom have come to respect her knowledge, professionalism and doggedness even as they often cower at the prospect of her calls. To quote one of the many executives whom she covered: “She was inquisitive, professional and fair. No matter what the subject, I never felt that she was loaded with ‘Gotcha’ questions, and her reporting was complete and unbiased.” As another said: “When you get a message that she calls, it’s time to take a couple aspirin and drink three Coca-Colas before you call her back.” I can’t imagine a higher compliment.
In just the past year, Joann has worked with beat reporters to break the news that insurance giant AIG was replacing its chief executive, revealed that General Electric was flying for years a spare business jet for ex-CEO Jeff Immelt, gave the world its first look at David Rockefeller’s extensive and meticulous set of Rolodex cards, and, most recently, within weeks of her retirement, breaking the news that Lloyd Blankfein would be stepping down soon as chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.
Joann joined the Journal in 1971, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was trading around 900, as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau. She was one of the paper’s first female reporters. She worked in the Chicago bureau between 1973 and 1979 and then moved to the Washington bureau, where she covered several beats including housing and urban affairs. In 1987, she was promoted to news editor and joined the London office, helping run the Journal’s first women-led bureau. She returned to New York to launch the Journal’s management coverage and its first careers column. She was part of a WSJ team that shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for a series of stories on corporate malfeasance.
In recent years, as Management News Editor, Joann has helped drive our coverage of corporate governance and management issues. And her “Your Executive Career” advice column appears regularly. In late 2016, she published a book about female executives entitled “Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.”
I will be sharing details soon on our plans to celebrate her career. In the meantime, I’d like all of you to join me in thanking Joann for her countless contributions to the Journal, congratulating her for all her successes and wishing her the very best.
Gerry
