WSJ to open style news desk

Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray and senior editor for features Mike Miller sent out the following on Monday:

Dear All,

From its launch 14 years ago, WSJ. Magazine has played a powerful role in expanding the Wall Street Journal’s audience and authority. With high aesthetic standards, a keen radar for trends, and an expansive canvas for long-form journalism and sumptuous photography, the magazine has done something that seemed improbable at its founding: made the Journal an important force in the worlds of fashion and style. As those domains increasingly intersect with the worlds of business, money and culture, that crossover has become a big story for the entire Wall Street Journal, and our magazine, under editor Kristina O’Neill, has been leading the way.

Today we’re announcing a plan to expand the magazine’s coverage with a new team focusing on digital coverage of the world of fashion, style and culture–defining those domains broadly. Our new Style News desk will blend deep reporting, wit, and an eye for unexpected trends to deliver spot stories, analysis and features, presented to readers on our digital platforms under the flag of WSJ. Magazine. Whether it’s Jeff Bezos’s disco-themed New Year’s Eve ensemble or the “book stylists” of The White Lotus, our aim will be both to edify and entertain our existing readers and draw in new ones.

We’re assigning some of the WSJ’s top talent to the desk, and posting six new positions (three reporters, two editors and a photo editor). Leading the desk will be Sarah Ball, who joined us in 2018 as the magazine’s digital editor and has become one of the newsroom’s most accomplished and strategic digital leaders. Sarah came to us from Condé Nast, where she worked as an editor at Vanity Fair and GQ for eight years. She will continue to report to Kristina.

Also joining the desk are our star fashion columnists Rory Satran and Jacob Gallagher, whose deeply reported and ahead-of-the-curve dispatches have become popular and powerful WSJ franchises; and our stellar team of arts reporters, led by their editor Yael Kohen.

The Style News desk will start taking shape in April and delivering stories later this year.

– Matt and Mike