WSJ reporter leaves for Portfolio

Peter Waldman, who has been at The Wall Street Journal for more than 20 years, is leaving the paper for a job at new business magazine Conde Nast Portfolio, writes Felix Gillette of The New York Observer.

Waldman, an investigative feature reporter based out of San Francisco, will join the magazine next month.

Gillette wrote, “‘The Journal is the purest journalistic culture I’ve ever seen,’ said Mr. Waldman. ‘Unless that changes, reporters here aren’t going to want to leave. I don’t think [Murdoch’s] acquisition of the company would change that necessarily because the culture is so strong. I don’t think there will be an exodus unless he does something to cause people to lose faith.’

“Mr. Waldman joined the Journal in 1986 as an intern in the paper’s San Francisco bureau. Over the years, he has held various positions at the Journal including a six-year stint as a foreign correspondent covering the Middle East.

“Mr. Waldman said he is looking forward to stretching his writing muscles. He said he will continue to be based in San Francisco, but will enjoy broad leeway in following stories, including possible returns to the Middle East.”

Read more here.

In 1998, Waldman was a member of a team of Journal reporters that received the Overseas Press Club’s Malcolm Forbes Award for business reporting from abroad for their coverage of the Asian financial crisis. Also in 1998, he received a citation from the Overseas Press Club for his story on birth defects resulting from the Vietnam War. In 2000, Waldman won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers‘ award for breaking-news coverage for an article he wrote about environmental-testing fraud in Texas.