WSJ appoints a slew of coverage chiefs

Wall Street Journal chief news editor Jason Anders sent out the following announcement on Friday:

All,

Following on the recent announcements from Gerry and Matt, I’m delighted to share the rest of our senior newsroom leadership team. We have aimed to create a structure that clarifies the roles and responsibilities of our journalists while ensuring we can more nimbly embrace new ways of telling stories and reaching our readers. These announcements are an important step toward that goal. Going forward, the coverage chiefs will be responsible in new and greater ways for what we publish every day. All of this is built on coordination and collaboration, and so the chiefs will move to the center of the 6th floor with me and other senior editors. We’ll have more to say on that in the coming weeks as the new structure rolls out. But for now, I’d like to introduce you to the our new chiefs for coverage, platforms and editing.

Jamie Heller is named Corporate Coverage Chief, responsible for all business and technology coverage at the Journal. Jamie is exceptionally well qualified to take over one of our most important coverage areas. Over the last two years, she has been Deputy Finance Editor, where she honchoed the Passivists series, led the Wall Street coverage of Valeant’s decline and delved into the booming financial-advice business. As Deals Editor, she helped grow the group beyond mergers and buyouts to include IPOs and the rise of activism, and worked with corporate reporters around the world to deliver dominating coverage of major global transactions. Jamie joined the online edition of the Journal 15 years ago, where she oversaw the Law Blog — our first — before moving to other senior posts. Jamie is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, and lives in Manhattan with her husband and two teenage sons.

Gordon Fairclough is named World Coverage Chief. Gordon will direct all of our coverage from outside the U.S., drawing on his extensive experience in foreign postings. Gordon has most recently been the Politics and Economy Editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before moving to London, he was the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, overseeing coverage of violence against women in India, the fallout of a devastating earthquake in Nepal, the election of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other core stories. Gordon was part of the team in China that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and he has also had postings in Prague, South Korea, Japan, Bangkok and New York. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Gordon, already a master of shuttle diplomacy, will split time between New York and London before relocating to the U.S. next year.

Gordon will draw on the expertise of Thorold Barker in London and Drew Dowell in Hong Kong in making his news decisions, and our bureaus outside the U.S. will jointly report to Gordon and to Thorold (in EMEA) and to Drew (in APAC) to provide them with the in-region support they need.

Emily Nelson is named U.S. Coverage Chief, overseeing our incredibly talented team of reporters and editors who cover education, immigration, law, economic development and other major regional news. Emily brings a strong background in news and features and has shepherded some of our most loved and imitated stories and visual packages. As Life and Arts editor for the past year, she helped lead the creation of a new home for our arts and features coverage, building on her experience running Personal Journal. Emily joined the Journal in 1995 as an intern in the Atlanta bureau. Reporter postings took her to Pittsburgh, Dallas and New York, before she moved to London, where she became bureau chief. A native New Yorker, Emily is a graduate of Yale University. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and son.

Lisa Bannon is named Life and Arts Coverage Chief. As deputy in that group, Lisa has focused on developing new storytelling formats, drawing on her more than two decades of experience as a reporter and editor at the Journal. Her insight and enthusiasm have led us to new heights in one of our readers’ most beloved coverage areas. Lisa joined the Journal as a correspondent in Italy, and covered beats as varied as politics, education, retail and entertainment in postings there and in Los Angeles and New York, where she became a bureau chief. During her time on Page One, Lisa focused on corporate and international features, and was a valuable coach on how to write corporate leders. She is a graduate of Miami University of Ohio, and she and her husband have three teenagers.

These new chiefs join two of our most distinguished newsroom leaders to round out the coverage team: Paul Beckett, our Politics Coverage Chief and Washington Bureau Chief; and Dennis Berman, our Finance Coverage Chief. Neither needs to be introduced to you; each has a long record of accomplishment as journalists and leaders. Between them, they have had bylines on more big stories than anyone can count, and been key drivers of many of the biggest and most important stories we’ve done at The Journal over many years.

Jennifer Hicks is named Digital News Editor, responsible for ensuring that the journalism reported, written and published by our coverage teams has the highest impact possible on the web, desktop, our apps and across social media and other off-platform channels. Jennifer is a key part of our 2020 transformation efforts and has worked with teams across the newsroom to initiate projects such as the Future of Everything podcast, the upcoming What’s News briefing and our collaboration with the Guardian’s Mobile Innovation Lab. In early 2016, Jennifer took on a role leading the Journal’s product team where she oversaw product development for WSJ.com, off-platform initiatives and editorial tools, and has served as a senior editor for digital news in New York and London. She joined the Journal in 2004 as an interactive news assistant. Jennifer is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and Columbia University. She is a native of Norman, Okla., and lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

Alexandra Kaptik is named Editing Chief, responsible for all of our editing operations and ensuring that we are publishing our journalism in the best way to reach our mobile audience. In the past two decades, Lex has played a major role in mapping our digital future, and more recently as part of the 2020 project has been instrumental in rethinking the way we work in a mobile world. Her work on that front continues — and becomes even more critical — in this new role as we adapt our editing desks. Most recently as Deputy Business Editor, Lex led our corporate news and enterprise coverage and drove some of our most important stories and innovative online features. Her previous postings include editor on the U.S. desk and a number of key WSJ.com roles. Lex joined the Journal in 1997 as a Dow Jones News Fund intern.

Finally, we also are lucky to be able to draw on three exceptionally talented newsroom leaders to help oversee our daily coverage. Emma Moody, Phil Izzo and Gráinne McCarthy are each named Deputy Chief News Editor.

For the past two years, Emma has shepherded our biggest stories of the day for Page One, where her exemplary news judgment and insight have elevated all that we do. In her new post, she will take on even more responsibility for driving our most important news, with a focus on making sure we are reaching our digital audience earlier in the day with our best journalism. Emma joined the Journal in 2009 as markets editor in Money & Investing before becoming Deputy Finance Editor. Prior to the Journal, Emma spent 13 years at Bloomberg News as a reporter and editor across markets and corporate news, and served as Managing Editor for corporate news. She also had stints at the Australian in Sydney and the Advertiser, in Adelaide. Emma is a graduate of the University of South Australia. She lives in Brooklyn with her small, fluffy dog, Herschel, who has been known to make an appearance on WSJ.com.

Phil’s leadership in reaching our mobile audience has been critical to the Journal’s success, and he will build on that as he takes on greater oversight of our coverage and the way we deliver it. Phil has spent years at the forefront of our digital journalism: he launched and was the first editor of our popular Real-Time Economics blog, ran the innovative What’s News app, was instrumental in shaping our election-night coverage for the mobile audience and as deputy helped run our digital news desk. Most recently as Mobile Editor, Phil led a revamp of the way we reach our fastest-growing audience. We all saw one impressive result of that work in July with the launch of our new mobile app, and another milestone update is coming soon. Phil joined the Journal in 1999 as a news assistant for the overseas copy desk. He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife and daughter.

Gráinne already runs some of our most important coverage, and will draw on her experience from a series of leadership posts across the Journal as she takes on even more responsibility. She will work with me to direct coverage and set priorities for our efforts in EMEA and APAC, and, critically, will help tee up the U.S. day from her base in London. Gráinne has most recently been our senior news editor for EMEA. She took the job just after Britain voted to leave the EU and has led coverage of our biggest stories around the region, including Europe’s political tumult, the pursuit of ISIS and a series of major terror attacks. Gráinne previously served as Paris Bureau Chief for five busy years, and held other top jobs with WSJ.com and Dow Jones Newswires. She is a graduate of Dublin City University and the University of Limerick, and was a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University in 2001. Gráinne lives in London with her husband and two boys.

This team, which reports to me, is an absolute powerhouse of journalists and leaders who will help write the next chapter at the Journal. Besides leading the news, this team will be central as we accelerate our progress toward more sophisticated storytelling with greater integration of text, visuals and video; move to a more mobile-focused workflow; and undertake a thorough review of our coverage and priorities.

These moves mean we are looking for strong journalists for several key deputy coverage roles: Deputy Corporate Coverage Chief, Deputy Finance Coverage Chief, Deputy World Coverage Chief and Deputy Life and Arts Coverage Chief. We are also seeking platform editors for mobile, desktop and social. Our microsite will be updated shortly with these and other open positions. If you are interested, please apply there and alert the relevant chief.

Please join me in congratulating the senior coverage team.

Jason