WSJ names editors to oversee ethics, standards

Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following editor appointmsnts Thursday afternoon:

An unshakeable commitment to the strictest ethics and the highest values is at the core of our journalism. Everything we do at Dow Jones is underpinned by our striving to meet the most elevated standards of reporting and editing. It is the foundation of the trust our readers place in us.

As we complete the integration of the Journal and Newswires we place renewed emphasis on those standards. We will shortly be a fully integrated newsroom that produces thousands of headlines, articles, blog posts, comments, tweets, videos and other journalistic articulations a day. As we have noted, this is an unmatched opportunity to extend and enhance our content. But it also requires us to be ever more vigilant in enforcing our standards.

Today I am delighted to announce that Neal Lipschutz will lead these efforts. He becomes Editor, Ethics, overseeing ethics and standards for The Wall Street Journal and all of Dow Jones. He will be the arbiter on all standards and ethics issues. Neal will report to me.

Karen Miller Pensiero is named Editor, Newsroom Standards. Karen will oversee our final reading and journalism standards and ethics, among other areas. She also will continue to oversee standards and ethics training for the global news group. Karen will report to Neal.

Neal has been a linchpin of Dow Jones journalism for more than three decades. He embodies the very spirit of our values and standards. He joined the company in 1982 as a national copy reader for Dow Jones Capital Markets Report. He has held a series of news management positions for what was the stand-alone Dow Jones Newswires news team. He was named to his current role of Newswires managing editor in 2005. Neal received a 2011 Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his columns for Dow Jones Newswires.

Karen is among the most trusted and experienced editors we have. She joined Dow Jones in 1984 as an intern and then in 1985 as a copy editor at The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels, where she later was Money & Markets Editor. She moved to New York in 1990 to create the Overseas Copy Desk, and has held a variety of corporate positions, including director of corporate communications and director of Dow Jones Interactive Publishing International. She rejoined the news department in 2004 to bolster its standards and ethics team.

With Neal’s appointment, the title of Managing Editor, Dow Jones Newswires, is retired. I will be appointing a new editor to oversee the newswires products. But this change should be read as the ultimate statement of our commitment to creating a single news organization. Newswires now no longer has a separate reporting and managerial structure; it is, instead, a central part of a single, harmonized, global newsroom.

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