Likely replacements for departing Wall Street Journal ME

Current and former Wall Street Journal staff members speculate that at least four editors already within the paper are candidates to replace managing editor Marcus Brauchli, who resigned Tuesday.

Almost all agree that Robert Thomson, who was named publisher back in December when News Corp., took over the paper, will assume most of the control of the newsroom decisions, but that CEO Rupert Murdoch will need to pick someone from inside the paper to take on the ME slot to keep the reporters and lower-level editors happy.

“I think any decision might have to be approved by the oversight committee, and that might be a reason to put in an experienced Dow Jones person, for show,” said one staff member.

One contrarian, however, doubted that Murdoch would pick someone already at the paper. “He has already fiddled with the front page design twice and is in the process of doing so again,” this person said. “And if he really wants to make changes in the newsroom, it’s hard to see how he could do so with a WSJ person. My guess is that Robert Thomson will be either interim for a long time or will quietly lose the interim title at some point.”

Nik Doegun, the current editor of the Money & Investing section; John Bussey, former foreign editor and now Washington bureau chief; and Alan Murray, executive editor of WSJ Online, were named as candidates to be a new No. 2 person in the newsroom behind Thomson.

“Those guys are all very senior folks who would be logical candidates, assuming that the managing editor ceased to control things and that Thomson took over direct control of the paper, sort of like what the Times did some time ago when they created an executive editor and named a managing editor below him,” said one staff writer. “That would be the soft approach.”

Another option, said one longtime Dow Jones employee, is editorial page editor Paul Gigot. “Gigot started in the news department and is probably a bit simpatico with Rupert’s worldview, including how the newsroom should change. And that would enable Rupert to hire an internal person who would indeed shake up the newsroom culture.”

Disclosure: I am an acquaintance of both Deogun and Murray, who both spoke at a business journalism symposium held at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2006. Murray is a UNC grad, and Deogun and I competed against each other in the 1990s while covering Coca-Cola Co. I have not asked either to comment.