The Wall Street Journal's Yankee situation

Tyler Mathisen, the managing editor of CNBC, compares the resignation of Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli to Joe Torre leaving as manager of the New York Yankees.

Mathisen writes, “Now, four months after gaining control of Dow Jones, the new owner clearly is exercising the prerogatives of ownership. Brauchli, part of the paper’s longtime establishment, stood in the way of that. He wasn’t exactly fired, or so it seems. But then again, neither was former Yankee manager Joe Torre.

“Last fall, as you may recall, the Yankees made Torre an offer he couldn’t accept. So he left. Brauchli confronted a similar situation — an owner who didn’t want him running things anymore. So Brauchli popped a Torre. He stepped aside before it got ugly. That takes guts and good sense, though one suspects that Brauchli’s guts were somehow fortified financially.

“Now Rupert Murdoch, the crafty, Steinbrennarian eminence of the media biz, gets to put a new manager in place. It will be interesting to see whether the new guy turns out to be a Torre, a Billy Martin — or a Stump Merrill.”

Read more here.