Peers named new media team editor at WSJ

Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson sent the following staff announcement out Tuesday morning:

Merissa Marr, who has provided admirable and enlightened leadership of our Media team, is taking personal leave. She has overseen the expansion of our coverage, including the creation of a designated Monday section, and helped to translate the massive changes in the digital world into coherent copy for our readers. The team has led the way on breaking stories and in identifying emerging themes, and enhanced our profile on the web. Merissa has also skillfully and thoughtfully mentored a crop of particularly promising journalists. An extremely important new assignment will await Merissa’s return from leave.
Her successor will be none other than Martin Peers, who is returning to harvest a familiar field. Martin was the deputy in MAM from 2006-2008, and has been deputy editor of the Heard on the Street team since 2008, writing about the convergence of media, tech and telecom. The Heard team has transformed business commentary in the American media – rather unusually, the Journal had previously outsourced high-end analysis to a London-based outfit, but, thanks to Thorold Barker and Martin, we now set the global standard.
Martin joined the Journal as a media reporter in 1999. Even though he began his reporting career in Australia in 1982, he has overcome that disability and thrived. He moved to the US in 1991 with the Australian Financial Review, and has worked for the New York Post and Variety. Martin graduated from NSW Institute of Technology in Sydney with a BA in 1982. He and his wife and two teenage kids, and rambunctious dog, live in Maplewood, N.J. Martin will report to Alex Martin.
We wish Merissa and Martin the very, very best for the challenges ahead.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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RickyT says:
October 4, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Mr. Peers has his work cut out for him. It's widely recognized among competitors and readers that the WSJ's media coverage has gone from "must read" to "who cares?" since Murdoch bought the paper. The breaking-news stories are about fluff. The enterprise is virtually nonexistent. The reporters are too young and inexperienced to ask deeper questions or put things in context. Whether Peers can improve upon his harsh, awkward management style to bring out the best in his charges is the question everyone at the paper is asking.