WSJ news editor Scism is leaving after 30 years

Leslie Scism

Wall Street Journal news editor Leslie Scism, who has been with the paper since 1993, is retiring.

Friday is her last day. But she plans to freelance on insurance topics for Journal Reports.

“I walked through the doors of 200 Liberty Street, back in May 1993, soon after getting my MBA through the Knight-Bagehot program, to start work at the WSJ, and don’t think I had a clue then that I would become one of the long-tenured people,” she wrote in an email.

Scism has long specialized in writing about insurance: car, home, life, commercial and catastrophe coverage, and many other type policies in between. She joined The Journal after working at The Philadelphia Daily News and the Bucks County Courier Times.

Colleague Jean Eaglesham will pick up a lot of the insurance coverage, and Scism in the middle of an edit on Thursday afternoon of what will likely be her last WSJ byline as the paper’s insurance reporter.

“There is always the possibility of a breaking story tonight or tomorrow, of course!” she said. “I had to work late last Friday writing about State Farm quitting new home-insurance sales in California.”

She is a UNC-CH graduate,

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.