WSJ’s Thomson in running to oversee News Corp’s media company

Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson is in the running to head the media company being split off from News Corp. that would include the paper, reports Mark Sweney of The Guardian in London.

Sweney writes, “While considered a longer shot, Murdoch might consider turning to Australian-born Thomson, once described in an article in the New Yorker as ‘perhaps his only close friend’. Thomson was a close adviser on his $5bn takeover of Dow Jones in 2007.

“He was brought into the News Corp fold after getting to know Murdoch while he was US managing editor of the Financial Times. Murdoch made him editor of the Times in 2002 and entrusted him with the role of managing editor of the Wall Street Journal after the buyout of Dow Jones.

“Both are Australian, share the same 11 March birthday – although Thomson is 30 years younger – are married to Chinese women and have children of about the same age.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.