Arango leaves Fortune for Times, which strikes out with WSJ reporters

John Koblin of The New York Observer reports Wednesday that Fortune reporter Tim Arango is leaving the magazine for a job on the New York Times business desk to cover media companies.

However, The Times was unsuccessful in luring reporters from The Wall Street Journal.

Koblin wrote, “His arrival will come as a relief to the Times’ business team. Since Mr. Siklos left, the paper’s business reporters have been grumbling about having to take time away from their normal beats to pinch-hit on corporate media stories, according to one.

“‘It’s about time we finally hired someone,’ said the reporter. ‘It’s taken such a long time and there was a lot of frustration here.’

“It wasn’t through lack of effort. Indeed, it doesn’t appear that Mr. Arango was Times business editor Larry Ingrassia’s first choice for the job. According to several sources, Mr. Ingrassia offered the position to two Wall Street Journal reporters, Kate Kelly and Merissa Marr, who both declined. Mr. Ingrassia was also in advanced talks with Journal media reporter Sarah Ellison before she pulled herself out of the running, and he talked to another Journal media reporter, Matthew Karnitschnig.

“More broadly, as Off the Record has previously reported, Mr. Ingrassia has recently launched an effort to lure reporters away from The Journal, particularly since news broke that Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of taking over the paper. But so far the campaign has yielded little.”

Read more here.