WSJ/Dow Jones name Canada bureau chief

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson sent out the following announcement on Friday morning:

I am pleased to announce that Chip Cummins will become Bureau Chief for Canada, overseeing Dow Jones Newswires and Wall Street Journal reporters based in Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary. Chip takes on this important leadership role as Canada, including Saskatchewan, becomes more central to the global economy, not only because of a resource-rich topography but because it has an unusually resilient banking sector. There’s a rich seam of political news to be mined as well as the task of tracking the travails of Bonhomme Carnaval.

In his new role, to which he will ascend early next year, Chip will lead a staff of 17 journalists. He will report to Steve Wisnefski, Newswires’ senior editor for the Americas, and to Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and empress of the known world.

Chip is well qualified for the challenge of tackling the sometimes fractious relations among the Canadian provinces, having been The Wall Street Journal’s Dubai-based Mideast Bureau Chief, overseeing coverage of the region, including unrest in Iran and the war in Iraq. For much of that time, Chip’s area of responsibility also included Africa. Before moving to Dubai, he was a reporter for the Journal in London and Dallas, covering the global oil industry and the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, among other stories. He previously worked in London as a forex reporter for Dow Jones Newswires. He joined our company as an overnight copy editor for The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong in 1996.

Before joining Dow Jones, Chip served three years as an officer in the U.S. Navy and was posted aboard a warship based in Japan. Having been born and raised in Louisville, Ky, he graduated from Harvard College. Please join me in congratulating Chip and wishing him the best in his important new assignment.