WSJ’s Podd is retiring after 25 years

Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray sent out the following announcement on Wednesday:

Dear All:

After more than 25 years at The Wall Street Journal, and a brilliant track record of success in a wide range of leadership roles, our dear colleague Ann Podd has decided to retire early next year.

From her ringing, joyful laugh, to her persistence and dedication to enhancing The Journal’s preeminent perch in journalism, Ann has long been a defining presence in the newsroom. She is a model for all of us in the way she marries the highest standards of journalism with the need to regularly innovate and embrace change. She has willingly taken on a series of important, if sometimes challenging, roles and projects that have admirably showed all of us how to not just contribute to and elevate the newsroom broadly, but also how to reinvent oneself over the course of a career.

In her most recent job, as editor of print production for news, Ann has been central in rethinking our print product in the face of industry headwinds while serving as the conscience for our journalism and voice of our readers. Ann’s fingerprints are on every recent print success we have enjoyed.

Prior to that, she helmed more projects and initiatives than one can count, from the Global Journal to revamping our desk production to helping roll out our CMS. She has had the distinction of being both day editor and night editor–the latter at a time when we were redefining the role to be a far more active and aggressive driver of news, a job in which she excelled and became a trusted confidante for many editors. She was one of the first editors at the Journal to work with CNBC in the early days of our then-innovative deal to put journalists on-air. In mid-career, she diverted to Hong Kong to become managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Asia.

In the 1990s, Ann ran our WSJ spot news desk, a job in which she schooled literally hundreds of journalists in the basics of balance sheets, financial records and no-surprises journalism. Her progeny populate key roles across this and many other newsrooms, ensuring her influence and example will continue to brighten many corners of the industry. Before coming to The Journal in 1994, she held leadership roles at the New York Daily News, Bergen Record and Buffalo Courier-Express (where she was a pioneer as the first woman to be business editor). She started her career as a reporter at the AP in Buffalo, her hometown.

Above all, Ann has been a friend, mentor, counselor, sounding board and all-around mensch to just about everyone who has come through the doors of this institution, including me. Her advice and insight are always marked by candor, humor, wisdom and insight. She has been the kind of colleague who makes The Wall Street Journal a special place to come to work every day. There’s no getting around the fact that she will be a loss for us, even though she will be taking great joy in spending more time with her husband, Tim; her two children and her two grandchildren.

Happily, we will have ample opportunity to celebrate Ann in the New Year, so this is not goodbye quite yet. But it is the time to congratulate and thank Ann for all she has meant to the Journal, and to reflect on the permanent impression she has left on the institution and us all.

— Matt