Corporate Communication versus Journalism

First read the message (1) Corporate Communications Director Kate Dobbin from The Wall Street Journal Europe is sending to all her press contacts regarding the resignation of WSJE Publisher Andrew Langhoff.
Then read what WSJ journalists (2) found out about the resignation, and what happened in reality.

(1)********************
The Wall Street Journal Europe Announces Management Change

Dow Jones & Company
11.10.2011 18:33
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LONDON, 2011-10-11 18:32 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Wall Street Journal Europe today announced the resignation of its publisher, Andrew Langhoff.

A search will begin for a successor. In the interim, Kelly Leach, senior vice president and head of strategy for Dow Jones, will oversee EMEA operations.

''Andrew has played a number of important roles at Dow Jones since 2003 and has been instrumental in successfully growing our businesses in Europe over the past several years. He has built a strong team and leaves the Journal franchise with strong momentum in Europe, with more initiatives in the pipeline. We thank him for his many important contributions to the company,'' said Todd Larsen, president of Dow Jones & Company.

As publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe and managing director for EMEA, Mr. Langhoff had been responsible for Dow Jones'' consumer and enterprise businesses in the region since January 2009. Prior to his European role, he served with distinction as the CEO of Ottaway Newspapers, which since has been renamed the Dow Jones Local Media Group. Mr. Langhoff joined Dow Jones in 2003 as general counsel for Ottaway and later led that unit''s digital development operations.

About The Wall Street Journal Europe
Founded in 1983, The Wall Street Journal Europe forms part of the world''s leading business publication franchise, which also includes The Wall Street Journal and The Wall Street Journal Asia with a combined global audience of 3.5 million. The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com is the leading provider of business and financial news and analysis on the Web with more than one million subscribers and 32 million visitors per month worldwide. The Wall Street Journal Europe draws on the Dow Jones global network of 2,100 business and financial news staff, including more than 440 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Its website, europe.WSJ.com, offers relevant, reliable breaking news and analysis, opinion, market data and multimedia features tailored for a European audience.

CONTACT: Media Contact: Kate Dobbin Dow Jones & Company +44 (203) 426 1164 Kate.Dobbin@dowjones.com
Dow Jones & Company Admiral House 66-68 East Smithfield London E1W 1AW News Source: NASDAQ OMX
11.10.2011 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a company of EquityStory AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
DGAP''s Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and http://www.dgap.de/


(2)**************
Now read what journalists report on the issue:

Publisher of WSJ Europe Resigns
By PAUL SONNE And BRUCE ORWALL

LONDON—Dow Jones & Co.'s top European executive resigned Tuesday following an internal investigation into two articles published in The Wall Street Journal Europe that featured a company with a contractual link to the paper's circulation department.

Andrew Langhoff, managing director of Dow Jones & Co. in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, stepped down after an internal probe showed two articles in the paper's Special Reports section had been prompted by an agreement the circulation department struck with Executive Learning Partnership, or ELP, a Netherlands-based consulting firm.

"That relationship, overseen by a now-former employee, is no longer in place," Mr. Langhoff said in an internal email to employees. "Because the agreement could leave the impression that news coverage can be influenced by commercial relationships, as publisher with executive oversight, I believe that my resignation is now the most honorable course," Mr. Langhoff said.

Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp., which owns all editions of The Wall Street Journal.

According to people familiar with the matter, an internal investigation at Dow Jones showed that Mr. Langhoff personally pressured two reporters into writing articles featuring ELP. Mr. Langhoff declined to be interviewed Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal Europe has appended disclaimers to two articles featuring ELP that ran in the paper's Special Reports section on Oct. 14, 2010, and Mar. 14, 2011. The disclaimer says the "impetus" for the stories was an agreement between The Wall Street Journal Europe's circulation department and ELP. It says "the reporting and writing were solely the responsibility of the News Department" and were not subject to review by the paper's circulation department or the firm. "However, any action that creates an impression that news coverage can be influenced by commercial interests is a breach of the ethical standards of Dow Jones & Co.," the disclaimer says.


Between May 2009 and April 2011, ELP was a lead sponsor of the "Future Leadership Institute," an initiative of The Wall Street Journal Europe's circulation department, Nick Van Heck, a partner at ELP, said in an interview Tuesday.

Both Mr. Van Heck and a spokeswoman for Dow Jones & Co. declined to comment on the specifics of the contract. According to a person familiar with the matter, the agreement was a bulk-circulation deal in which discounted papers were sold to ELP for distribution to students and others, boosting the Journal's circulation in Europe.

People familiar with the matter said the contract included language suggesting ELP could receive some coverage in the pages of The Wall Street Journal Europe. A paragraph in the agreement gave the paper's news department final control over any article, including the possibility that no story at all would appear, one of the people said.

"It was made very clear to us that the editorial freedom, or the editorial independence, was not being infringed by this," Mr. Van Heck said. He said if executives from ELP were interviewed or included in the paper, that was the editorial staff's choice. Mr. Van Heck says ELP terminated the relationship earlier this year.

Still, last fall, Mr. Langhoff personally, and through people who worked with him, pressed for an article featuring ELP to fulfill the contractual obligation, people familiar with the matter said. A Special Reports reporter alerted the paper's then-editor, Patience Wheatcroft, who people familiar with the matter say reviewed the contractual language about editorial control. The article went forward and was published.

Ms. Wheatcroft left The Wall Street Journal Europe in late 2010 to join the U.K. House of Lords. She declined to commentTuesday.

The following spring, Mr. Langhoff and others pressed for ELP to again be featured in an article, according to people familiar with the matter. The reporter didn't flag the assignment because he believed the practice was established policy, people familiar with the matter said.

The issue came to light after a former Dow Jones circulation employee in Europe lodged complaints about Mr. Langhoff and the ELP contract, people familiar with the matter said. An internal investigation was launched, leading top editors in New York to discover the editorial component of the deal and the two stories produced, according to the people familiar with the situation.

The Wall Street Journal Europe has a circulation of about 73,250. The paper runs themed Special Reports regularly.

New York-based News Corp. has been reeling from a scandal at News of the World, its now-closed British tabloid that intercepted voice-mail messages in pursuit of scoops and allegedly paid bribes to police.

Mr. Langhoff is the second top Dow Jones executive to depart in recent months. Les Hinton, chief executive of Dow Jones and before that executive chairman of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper unit, resigned in July amid the backlash over the voice-mail hacking scandal. Mr. Hinton said he didn't know about the phone hacking but resigned because it occurred on his watch. Mr. Hinton is scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee via video link Oct. 24.

Dow Jones said it will begin a search for Mr. Langhoff's successor. Kelly Leach, senior vice president and head of strategy for the company, will oversee Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the interim.

"Andrew has played a number of important roles at Dow Jones since 2003 and has been instrumental in successfully growing our businesses in Europe over the past several years," Todd Larsen, president of Dow Jones, said in a statement. Mr. Larsen said Mr. Langhoff built a strong team and left the paper with strong momentum in Europe.

Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com and Bruce Orwall at bruce.orwall@wsj.com

Larsen to Be Next Dow Jones CEO?

Todd Larsen
President
Dow Jones

Dow Jones is without a CEO following the resignation last week of Les Hinton who had been sucked back into the phone hacking issues which happened on his watch in his previous job as head of News International. When News Corp bought Dow Jones in 2007 Chairman Rupert Mudoch flew his loyal lieutenant of 48 years to New York to take charge and to begin a transformation of the company. Together with editor Robert Thompson, Hinton brought the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) more into the mainstream. In Dow Jones he'd inherited a company divided - the Enterprise Media Group (EMG), including news aggregator Factiva and news service Dow Jones Newswires, at times competed with the so-called Consumer Media Group (CMG) which included WSJ, Barron's, Marketwatch and Financial News. In 2010 those two groups were merged under the leadership of the President of CMG Todd Larsen, who was appointed President of Dow Jones. That move put Clare Hart, head of EMG, out of a job.

Larsen, who looks about 16, is now the most likely internal candidate to fill the void left by Hinton. He has worked for Dow Jones since 1999 and is widely credited as being key to the success of WSJ's pay wall strategies. As a potential figure-head of the business he perhaps lacks the confidence and easy-going charm of Hinton and has been ruthless at times when it comes to axing long-term staffers but he has a sharp business brain.

But Murdoch often favours journalists to head up his newspaper companies and Larsen doesn't come from that background. Robert Thompson may be a potential candidate but his connections with News International could create a PR problem if he were appointed, although there has been no suggestion that Thompson is implicated in the phone hacking affair. The only other likely internal candidates have both left the company: Paul Bascobert, the former Chief Marketing Officer left to head up Bloomberg BusinessWeek and CFO Stephen Daintith, who Hinton brought with him from News International, returned to his homeland this year as Finance Director of DGMT, publisher of the Daily Mail.

It's unlikely that this time Murdoch will bring across a News International person to head up Dow Jones (certainly not CEO Rebekah Brooks who has resigned and been arrested) so he'll either have to poach from another News Corp property or look outside. in the meantime, Todd Larsen is apparently acting as CEO, reporting to News Corp COO Chase Carey.

The Wall Street Journal prides itself on balanced and fact-based reporting but the Opinion and Editorial pages (OpEd) have free rein to air controversial views, often quite right wing. In the opinion section of the website today there's a stout defence of Les Hinton's record adding that "We shudder to think what the paper would look like today without the sale to News Corp." The unsigned piece then goes on to rant about News Corp's "competitor critics" saying "The Schadenfreude is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw." The article has prompted 139 comments so far, mostly negative. "A masterpiece of bootlicking of your Murdochian overlord," wrote Jean King. "Apparently you do not realise how bad this Rupert-serving, Rupert-exculpatory screed looks. Another exercise in poor judgment."

Source: www.mediaconversations.be

The Journal Becomes Fox-ified

Op-Ed Columnist
The Journal Becomes Fox-ified
The New York Times
By JOE NOCERA

It took Rupert Murdoch only three and a half years to get there, starting with the moment he acquired the paper from the dysfunctional Bancroft family in December 2007, a purchase that was completed after he vowed to protect The Journal’s editorial integrity and agreed to a (toothless) board that was supposed to make sure he kept that promise.

Fat chance of that. Within five months, Murdoch had fired the editor and installed his close friend Robert Thomson, fresh from a stint Fox-ifying The Times of London. The new publisher was Leslie Hinton, former boss of the division that published Murdoch’s British newspapers, including The News of the World. (He resigned on Friday.) Soon came the changes, swift and sure: shorter articles, less depth, an increased emphasis on politics and, weirdly, sometimes surprisingly unsophisticated coverage of business.

Along with the transformation of a great paper into a mediocre one came a change that was both more subtle and more insidious. The political articles grew more and more slanted toward the Republican party line. The Journal sometimes took to using the word “Democrat” as an adjective instead of a noun, a usage favored by the right wing. In her book, “War at The Wall Street Journal,” Sarah Ellison recounts how editors inserted the phrase “assault on business” in an article about corporate taxes under President Obama. The Journal was turned into a propaganda vehicle for its owner’s conservative views. That’s half the definition of Fox-ification.

The other half is that Murdoch’s media outlets must shill for his business interests. With the News of the World scandal, The Journal has now shown itself willing to do that, too.

As a business story, the News of the World scandal isn’t just about phone hacking and police bribery. It is about Murdoch’s media empire, the News Corporation, being at risk — along with his family’s once unshakable hold on it. The old Wall Street Journal would have been leading the pack in pursuit of that story.

Now? At first, The Journal ignored the scandal, even though, as the Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff pointed out in Adweek, it was front-page news all across Britain. Then, when the scandal was no longer avoidable, The Journal did just enough to avoid being accused of looking the other way. Blogging for Columbia Journalism Review, Dean Starkman, the media critic, described The Journal’s coverage as “obviously hamstrung, and far, far below the paper’s true capacity.”

On Friday, however, the coverage went all the way to craven. The paper published an interview with Murdoch that might as well have been dictated by the News Corporation public relations department. He was going to testify before Parliament next week, he told the Journal reporter, because “it’s important to absolutely establish our integrity.” Some of the accusations made in Parliament were “total lies.” The News Corporation had handled the scandal “extremely well in every way possible.” So had his son James, a top company executive. “When I hear something going wrong, I insist on it being put right,” he said. He was “getting annoyed” by the scandal. And “tired.” And so on.

In the article containing the interview, there was no pushback against any of these statements, even though several of them bordered on the delusional. The two most obvious questions — When did Murdoch first learn of the phone hacking at The News of the World? And when did he learn that reporters were bribing police officers for information? — went unasked. The Journal reporter had either been told not to ask those questions, or instinctively knew that he shouldn’t. It is hard to know which is worse. The dwindling handful of great journalists who remain at the paper — Mark Maremont, Alan Murray and Alix Freedman among them — must be hanging their heads in shame.

To tell you the truth, I’m hanging my head in shame too. Four years ago, when Murdoch was battling recalcitrant members of the Bancroft family to gain control of The Journal, which he had long lusted after and which he viewed as the vehicle that would finally allow him to go head-to-head against The New York Times, I wrote several columns saying that he would be a better owner than the Bancrofts.

The Bancrofts’ history of mismanagement had made The Journal vulnerable in the first place. I thought that Murdoch’s resources would stop the financial bleeding, and that his desire for a decent legacy would keep him from destroying a great newspaper.

After the family agreed to sell to him, Elisabeth Goth, the brave Bancroft heir who had long tried to get her family to fix the company, told me, “He has a tremendous opportunity, and I don’t think he’s going to blow it.” In that same column, I wrote, “The chances of Mr. Murdoch wrecking The Journal are lower than you’d think.”

Mea culpa.



A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 16, 2011, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: The Journal Becomes Fox-ified.

Resignation letter Les Hinton, CEO Dow Jones, News Corp, nr 1 The Wall Street Journal

In his resignation letter to Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Hinton wrote:

Dear Rupert,
I have watched with sorrow from New York as the News of the World story has unfolded. I have seen hundreds of news reports of both actual and alleged misconduct during the time I was executive chairman of News International and responsible for the company. The pain caused to innocent people is unimaginable. That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp, and apologize to those hurt by the actions of the News of the World.
When I left News International in December 2007, I believed that the rotten element at the News of the World had been eliminated; that important lessons had been learned; and that journalistic integrity was restored.
My testimonies before the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee were given honestly. When I appeared before the Committee in March 2007, I expressed the belief that Clive Goodman had acted alone, but made clear our investigation was continuing.
In September 2009, I told the Committee there had never been any evidence delivered to me that suggested the conduct had spread beyond one journalist. If others had evidence that wrongdoing went further, I was not told about it.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to you for a wonderful working life. My admiration and respect for you are unbounded. You have built a magnificent business since I first joined 52 years ago and it has been an honor making my contribution.
With my warmest best wishes,
Les

Resignation Letter Les Hinton to Wall Street Journal Staff

In a letter to the staff of the Wall Street Journal, Hinton said:

Dear all,
Many of you will be aware by now that I resigned today from Dow Jones and News Corp. I attach below my resignation letter to Rupert Murdoch.
It is a deeply, deeply sad day for me.
I want you all to know the pride and pleasure I have taken working at Dow Jones for the past three-and-a-half years. I have never been with better, more dedicated people, or had more fun in a job.
News Corp under Rupert’s brilliant leadership has proved a fitting parent of Dow Jones, allowing us to invest and expand as other media companies slashed costs. This support enabled us together to strengthen the company during a brutal economic downturn, developing fine new products – not to mention one of the world’s great newspapers led by one of the world’s great editors, my dear friend and colleague Robert Thomson.
However difficult this moment is for me, I depart with the certain knowledge that we have built the momentum to take Dow Jones on to ever greater things.
Good luck to you all and thank you.
Les

25th anniversary The Wall Street Journal Europe at the Gherkin

Two events in 1 go (April 16, 2008):
1. The Wall Street Journal Europe invited clients, readers and other VIPS to celebrate the 25th anniversary at the Gherkin in London. We rented both top floors, to accommodate the guests. Spectacular 360° view on London. A bit noisy because of the dome effect but certainly a place to impress your guests with.

2. For first time in history of The Wall Street Journal, the US version will be printed in London. At the moment WSJ will only be sold in the financial district of London. That means that in that area both WSJ and WSJE will be sold as separate products. In the rest of Europe we will still be selling WSJE.

Les Hinton, the new CEO of Dow Jones (former The Times) joined the party. He said we could be printing and selling WSJ also in other financial districts across Europe in the future.