Wessel: Proud to call myself a WSJ reporter

Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel, who resigned Wednesday to join the Brookings Institution, sent out the following message to his colleagues:

In 1983, after several other Wall Street Journal bureau chiefs and editors had turned me away, June Kronholz hired me as a reporter in the Boston bureau. Thirty years is a long time. When I joined the Journal we relied on fax machines, typewriters and teletypes . Thirty years is longer than I’ve been married and longer than my kids have been alive.

It’s time for me to try something else — not because I don’t enjoy coming to work every day and not because of any of the changes at the Journal, but because I’m 59 years old and I’d like to see what it’s like to do something different. After the start of the year, I’ll be the director of the new non-partisan Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings Institution.

I’m very glad that Gerry Baker has found a way for me to continue to contribute regularly to WSJ.com; more details to follow.

I have had the good fortune to be mentored by Norm Pearlstine, Paul Steiger, Al Hunt and Alan Murray. I have had the joy of working closely with Jerry Seib, Matthew Rose, Bob Davis, Greg Ip, Jon Hilsenrath and dozens of other world-class journalists. I have seen Robert Thomson, Gerry Baker, Rebecca Blumenstein, Matt Murray and Almar Latour equip the Journal to prosper in the global and digital arena while other newspapers atrophy. I am grateful to all of them for all they’ve taught me, for all the good times, for all the great stories and for nurturing the nation’s best journalistic franchise.

I am as proud to call myself as a Wall Street Journal reporter today as I was in 1983, and I know I’ll miss being in the midst of the news flow.  But I also know that it’s time for me to make room for a younger generation of gifted, hard-working, tenacious reporters covering the economy and economic policy around the world.

I will continue to be a close and loyal Journal reader. Although I won’t be sending so many early-morning emails, I know myself well enough to say that there’ll still be some.

With great admiration and deep thanks.