WSJ names Western its Washington editor

Paul Beckett, the Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, sent out the following announcement on Friday:

All: We are delighted to announce that Lora Western is our Washington Editor in New York, a new position that is designed to give the Washington coverage area a seat, literally, at the center of operations in New York and to oversee the polishing and publication of Washington copy in the new 2020 workflow.

This is a vital position to help ensure the smooth handling of Washington stories. It includes tracking the traffic and other metrics on stories in real time — and making whatever post-publication adjustments are needed to help them reach their maximum potential.

Lora will work with the publishing editors in New York who are dedicated to Washington stories, and will be in frequent contact throughout our news day with Washington editors. She will report to Paul.

In two decades at the Journal, Lora has worked in nearly every coverage area. She joined Dow Jones as an editor at The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, serving as deputy managing editor there before moving to New York, where she ran the foreign news desk. She managed the New York-based news desk that produced the overseas editions, then joined the US desk when it was created in 2008.

In 2011 she jumped to digital, working on the WSJ.com hub team, before joining the markets desk as digital point person, focused on improving presentation and promotion of stories online and experimenting with new tools to convey information. For the last year, she has been the digital partner for corporate coverage, continuing to help spearhead those efforts as our tools and knowledge have quickly evolved.

Lora began her career covering the electronics factories of Asia for a Hong Kong-based trade magazine. She is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Please join us in congratulating Lora on her new role.