Tension and strain among WSJ journalists

With the deal to sell the company to News Corp. days away, tensions have been rising between Wall Street Journal journalists and management, particularly CEO Richard Zannino, who is the first non-journalist running Dow Jones & Co. in decades, writes Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times.

Perez-Pena wrote, “Journalists are also facing two futures they never expected when they signed on to jobs they saw more as a mission, not a business — the uncertainty of what Mr. Murdoch would do as an owner, or the uncertainty of a suddenly harsh advertising climate that could lead to deep job cuts.

“‘There’s a real culture of passion for the truth, for shining lights in dark places and making the mysterious understood,’ said a reporter, one of dozens of people interviewed at The Journal and Dow Jones, nearly all of whom asked for anonymity, fearing a backlash from the current regime or the next one. ‘The overwhelming view here is that under Murdoch, that gets compromised from Day One, and that idea is devastating, heartbreaking, to people.’

“At times, that heartbreak has been expressed in gallows humor, as newsroom employees answered phones with ‘News Corporation’ and mimicked Mr. Murdoch’s Australian accent.

“In a conference call among editors and bureau chiefs, one said The Journal would follow the lead of The Sun, one of Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloids, which prints pictures of topless women on its third page.”

Read more here.