New head named for Dow Jones Newswires’ monitoring desk

Steve Wisnefski, the senior editor at Dow Jones News Newswires, sent out the following announcement to the staff on Thursday:

I am pleased to announce that Michelle Gerdes, a long-time member of the copy editing desk at the Wall Street Journal, will be joining Dow Jones Newswires to oversee our Monitoring Desk operations. She will start her new job on May 2.

In her role as News Editor, Michelle will guide a team of five copy editors who monitor a wide array of print and broadcast media outlets. The desk is responsible for quickly publishing brief items on significant news developments that haven’t yet been reported by Dow Jones. The desk is also called upon frequently to cover televised appearances of government officials, corporate executives and other newsmakers.

The desk plays an important role in ensuring that Newswires subscribers have complete and up-to-the-second reporting of critical news. It also serves as a first response unit of sorts for Dow Jones more broadly, alerting editors and reporters at Newswires and WSJ of significant developments.

Michelle joined WSJ.com in 2000 as a news assistant and shifted to the old WSJ monitor desk in 2002 as a proofreader. She joined the WSJ copy desk in 2003, was promoted to copy editor in 2005 then an assistant news editor (slot editor) in 2007. She has been a member of the National Desk since 2008.

In all her roles, Michelle served as a mentor to new hires and young editors. Michelle also has shown a keen eye to Dow Jones standards of fairness and accuracy and has helped spread that word to editorial staff.

Michelle, a graduate of Rutgers, worked as a reporter for Internet Financial Network covering stocks and the economy before joining Dow Jones. In addition to her work on the WSJ National Desk, Michelle is a regular contributor to The Juggle, WSJ.com’s work and family blog.