Claim: Wall Street Journal Page One Staff Dissolved
Ryan Tate · 06/10/08 07:28PMA tipster is telling us that the Wall Street Journal's fabled Page One staff will be dissolved into the news desk. Page One editor Mike Williams would become a "roving features editor," which sounds much less powerful. The Page One desk is responsible, among other things, for the often breezy but always well-researched A-Hed feature, which has been increasingly marginalized as the Journal's front page gets newsier. Its disbanding would mark only the latest move by new editor Robert Thomson to remake the Journal in the image of the Financial Times, Thomson's former employer and a favorite of ultimate Journal overlord Rupert Murdoch. In fact, the paper's old guard is said by our insider to be grumbling that recent FT-like stories, like the front page article on alleged flaws in the Libor benchmark lending rate, are shoving aside "stories that appeal beyond the circle of Murdoch's friends in the global elite." But not all veteran editors are suffering under a cluster of changes said to be coming down in the coming days.