WSJ online names new ME

Almar Latour has been named managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online effective Sept. 4. He is replacing Bill Grueskin, who was recently named deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Previously, Latour was the bureau chief for the technology group based in New York. His appointment represents another step in the continuing move to integrate the print and online editions of the Journal.

“As a bureau chief, Almar Latour has distinguished himself both as a leader of journalists and as an analyst of technology trends,” said Alan Murray, executive editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, in a statement. “He has a deep and long-standing interest in the Internet as a means of delivering news and information. The Journal already occupies a class of its own in the world of Internet news, with nearly one million paying subscribers, and many millions more who access our growing body of free content. With Almar in place, we’re now ready to enter a new period of change and growth.”

Latour, 36, joined the Journal as an intern for The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels in 1995, becoming a news assistant in the Journal’s Washington bureau later that year. In 1996, he became a reporter covering economic and political developments in Eastern Europe for the European Journal. After a stint on spot news in New York, Latour was named the paper’s Stockholm correspondent in 1998, covering economic, political and business developments in Northern Europe and the Baltic states. He moved to the London bureau in 2001 to write about European telecom and technology.

In 2003, Latour came to New York as a reporter in the New York technology group covering U.S. phone companies. He was named deputy bureau chief in 2005, and was named bureau chief later that year.