WSJ names new Canada bureau chief, global resources editor

Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following staff announcement on Friday:

I’m delighted to announce that Elena Cherney, the managing editor of the Toronto Globe & Mail and a former Wall Street Journal colleague, is rejoining us as our new Canada Bureau Chief and Global Resources Editor for the Journal.

A Montreal native who studied English and history at Yale University, Elena has had a sterling reporting and editing career in Canada. She started at the Montreal Gazette and worked for the National Post Toronto before joining the Journal in 2000. As our Canada correspondent for seven years, she covered a wide range of stories from the collapse of Conrad Black’s media empire to the rise of Blackberry and a series on health-care rationing in Canada and the U.S., while producing memorable aheds on the effort to ban sled-dogs and the obsession with Glenn Gould’s legacy. She joined the Globe & Mail in 2007 and rose rapidly through the ranks, including a stint running its Report on Business, where she oversaw a number of prize-winning stories; and the important job of developing the paper’s subscriber-only content strategy ahead of the launch of a metered paywall. She has been managing editor since August 2012, overseeing the paper’s journalism on all platforms.

Back at the Journal, Elena will oversee all aspects of Canada coverage, from energy to banking, trade to politics, for real time (including its successful Real-Time Canada blog) and print. As a dynamic and rapidly changing nation at the center of the global resources boom, not to mention the largest US trading partner and its nearest neighbor, Canada remains an important story for us and our global readers. She succeeds Chip Cummins, now decamped to London as European corporate editor. who did a great job building a robust and expanded bureau in Canada. I am grateful as well to deputy Carolyn King, who has done great work for us overseeing the bureau in recent months. Elena will report to World Editor Adam Horvath.

Importantly, Elena will take on a role as Global Resources Editor, working with her own reporters as well as many bureaus around the world to organize and drive more comprehensive and expansive coverage of non-energy resources stories. With her deep experience, Elena is well-situated to help extend our reach and ambition on resources coverage, as we have with other coverage areas including autos and technology. I expect her to work closely with Corporate Editor Dennis Berman in this role, as well as Chip, Francesco and others whose coverage areas include some resources beats.

Please join me in welcoming Elena back to the Journal. She should be up and running in Toronto by the end of the month.