WSJ/Dow Jones names Sydney bureau chief

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

“Having mastered the intricacies of life in the Middle East, Andrew Critchlow will now be grappling with one of the world’s most inscrutable cultures, that of Australia. Andy is our new Bureau Chief in Sydney, and will be driving coverage of Australia and New Zealand for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

“Andy is currently Middle East managing editor of Dow Jones Newswires and the Zawya Dow Jones News Service. In his three years in Dubai with Dow Jones, he has been instrumental in expanding the Middle East service by opening bureaus in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Doha. One measure of his success is that readership of ZDJ news behind the Zawya.com paywall has quadrupled in three years.

“Before joining Dow Jones, Andy was with Bloomberg as the Gulf OPEC correspondent and deputy bureau chief. He has also served as the senior Gulf correspondent in Dubai for the Middle East Economic Digest.

“Andy has a Masters degree in Middle East politics from Durham University and served four years in the British Army as a Grenadier Guard, seeing active service in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and East Africa. He will report to Sumathi Vaidyanathan, Newswires’ Editor – Operations/Asia-Pacific and Rebecca Blumenstein, the Journal’s Deputy Managing Editor.”