A first look at the new WSJ. editor

Erik Maza of Women’s Wear Daily profiles Kristina O’Neill, the new editor of WSJ., the Wall Street Journal magazine.

Maza writes, “She is the editor next door. Easy-going, with an all-American smile, she’s a 36-year-old wife and mother who lives in Brooklyn Heights. On weekends, you might spot her at Monty’s, a greasy pizzeria in her neighborhood, with her six-year-old daughter. Although she’s worked for some big personalities — as Candace Bushnell’s assistant at the New York Observer and then, at Bazaar, as a staffer under Kate Betts, and rising to executive editor under Glenda Bailey — she is much more low key.

“Says Bushnell, ‘Even when she was working for me, she always said she wanted to get married and have kids. She wanted her wedding song to be ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ by the Carpenters. I was writing ‘Sex and the City,’ and thinking, ‘Good luck!’ Sure enough, the kid gets married.’

“Her understated persona is perhaps what made her an attractive candidate to take over a magazine that needed to coexist with, not upstage, the Journal’s panoply of luxury sections.

“‘It comes wrapped up in the paper but for our millions of readers it’s one of the courses in the multicourse meal we serve them,’ said Mike Miller, the senior deputy managing editor who hired O’Neill.

“She understands this, too. She said one of her missions has been to bridge the gap between the magazine and the daily broadsheet.”

Read more here.