Forelle named WSJ’s financial editor

Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

I am thrilled to announce that Charles Forelle is appointed Financial Editor, succeeding Dennis Berman.

A 16-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal, Charles is a genuine polymath, a journalist who has repeatedly demonstrated his facility with breaking news; a deep thinker, with extensive knowledge of markets and economics; and a writer of uncommon talent, equally skilled at the pithy analytical post, the Twitter thread or the long-form narrative.  As Europe Finance Editor based in London, he has demonstrated a genius for innovation, reinventing this area of core coverage in the digital age by focusing our resources effectively and driving complicated stories with high intelligence.  Charles is also one of our more forward-thinking managers, a tech-savvy journalistic entrepreneur who writes code in his spare time and even creates his own apps, not insignificant skills as we continue to reinvent our journalism for digital priorities.

Charles has deep experience in reporting on and editing some of the biggest stories of our time.  In Boston, where he joined The Journal, he covered education and technology companies, and was a central part of the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting on the backdating of stock-options.  Charles moved to Brussels in 2007, where he covered the European Union and the continent’s financial crisis with great skill and judgment.  Since 2012 he has been based in London, where he has written comprehensively on matters financial and economic.  He has reported for the Journal from across the region, including from all the island members of the European Economic Area (surely an almost unique accomplishment).  For the last three years, he has been overseeing our markets coverage in the region and driving our global financial reporting.

Besides the Pulitzer, he has won a George Polk Award for business reporting, the Gerald Loeb Award and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.  In 2011, he and colleagues in Europe received the Overseas Press Club’s 2011 Bob Considine Award for international-affairs reporting and the New York Press Club’s 2011 award for business reporting, and was also part of a team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer for their coverage of the European sovereign debt crisis.

Charles was born in New York and received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Yale University.  He and his wife have two young daughters, and one old cat, and live in Greenwich (the one in London, not the one in Connecticut).  He takes up his new role next week, reporting to Jason Anders, and will be commuting between London and New York before moving back to the US permanently this summer.

Charles will be a splendid addition to our leadership team.  Please join me in congratulating him on his elevation and welcoming him home to New York.

Gerry