WSJ appoints new editors for U.S. news team

Glenn Hall, the U.S. editor of The Wall Street Journal, sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

I am excited to announce several moves that will strengthen the leadership of U.S. News and position us for the future.

Kate Linebaugh will take over management of East Coast news as Vanessa O’Connell moves into the Deputy U.S. Editor role. Kate will move into this role in January.

Neal Templin will lead our revamped New York coverage within the U.S. News regional structure. Neal shifts into this role effective immediately.

Kate, who has been deputy chief of the corporate bureau since 2013, has a great range of experience at WSJ, including a stint on U.S. News as the Michigan reporter. She joined the corporate bureau covering GE in 2011 and did a series of stories looking at the offshore cash held by U.S. companies, much of which is actually held in the U.S. Kate joined the Journal from Bloomberg News in 2004 covering regional investment banking in Hong Kong. After completing a Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship in 2008, she covered the auto bailout in the Detroit bureau and the Toyota sudden acceleration recall. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.

On the personal side, Kate tells me she recently ran her first marathon, which many of us read about in her touching account in Personal Journal about growing up with a marathoner and insights from her dad’s 1970s training journal. She also has competed in the World Ultimate Frisbee Club Championships in Perth, Australia and speaks Indonesian.

Neal, who took over the former Greater New York section in June after serving as Deputy Standards Editor, has had a distinguished career at WSJ, having served as a Page One editor, Dallas Bureau Chief, Editor of the Texas Journal and two stints as Personal Finance Editor. He joined the Journal in 1989 as an automotive reporter and later moved to Dallas, where he covered technology and then commercial real estate for the Journal.

In this new role following the closure of the Greater New York section, Neal will lead a team of 8 reporters based in New York; the East Coast team under Kate will now include reporters covering New Jersey and Connecticut/Long Island; and Rob Hunter’s real estate team will include reporters covering commercial and residential real estate in New York.

Please join me in congratulating Kate and Neal on their new roles.