Dow Jones management shuffle continues

The new publisher of the Wall Street Journal is L. Gordon Crovitz. He is also becoming an executive vice president at Dow Jones and will oversee Barron’s and MarketWatch as well.

Crovitz served since October 1998 as senior vice president of Dow Jones and president of the Electronic Publishing group, where he was responsible for the Company’s Dow Jones Newswires, Financial Information Services, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing businesses, which included The Wall Street Journal Online, Barron’s Online and MarketWatch. During this time, electronic publishing revenues doubled to more than $500 million, operating income tripled to more than $110 million and the operating margin grew to more than 22% from less than 5%.

I like the fact that the company is keeping with a tradition of placing journalists in the publisher’s role. Crovitz is a former editorial writer for the Journal and a former Loeb Award winner.

An AP article about the changes notes, “The overhaul will combine the print and Web editions of The Wall Street Journal for the first time in a new consumer publishing unit, which will also include the financial news Web site MarketWatch, Barron’s, and SmartMoney magazine, which is a joint venture with Hearst Corp.”

Read about all of the new Dow Jones executives under new CEO Richard Zannino here.