Categories: OLD Media Moves

WSJ deputy editor Murray to staff: Don’t leak Trump transcript

Wall Street Journal deputy editor Matt Murray warned the paper’s editorial staff not to leak the transcript of the paper’s interview with President Donald Trump, reports Josh Dawsey and Hadas Gold of Politico.

Dawsey and Gold reported that Journal editor Gerard “Baker, according to the transcript, asked many of the questions and took the lead byline on the main piece about the interview as well, an unusual step for the editor in chief of a paper with a large White House reporting staff.

“The Journal has not published a full transcript of the interview. The newspaper posted certain excerpts of the transcript online, but the full version has circulated around the Journal newsroom as well as among others in New York and Washington.

“Matt Murray, the Journal’s deputy editor-in-chief, warned staffers in a conference call in recent days about leaking the transcript, saying it would be a breach of trust, according to several sources familiar with the call.

“‘Damn right I told them that. It’s true,’ Murray said on Tuesday via a Journal spokesperson.”

Read more here to see the transcript, published by Politico.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.