New York (AFP) – The top executive at Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. is leaving and a veteran British journalist will take over until a successor is chosen, it was announced Tuesday.
Lex Fenwick is out after less than two years in the job and a review of Dow Jones’s “institutional strategy” will be undertaken, parent company News Corp. said.
News Corp., the publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, said it would seek to enhance Dow Jones’s DJX service, which provides financial terminals for traders, competing with Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg.
Will Lewis, News Corp’s chief creative officer and a former editor of Britain’s Daily Telegraph, will be interim CEO at Dow Jones, said Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp.
“We thank Lex for his time and energy at the helm of Dow Jones, and in particular for his original vision of DJX as an innovative way to integrate content and deliver it to customers in a timely manner,” said Thomson.
A search for a permanent chief executive is under way.
“We’re reviewing the institutional strategy of Dow Jones with an eye towards changes that will deliver even more value to its customers. As part of that, we’re planning improvements to DJX,” Thomson added.
Thomson said the group “will also be redoubling our efforts to develop The Wall Street Journal and its digital properties globally”.
Fenwick joined Dow Jones in February 2012 after more than two decades at Bloomberg, where he rose to chief operating officer alongside founder and now former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Lewis was a senior journalist at the Financial Times and Telegraph Media Group. He joined Murdoch’s now defunct British publishing arm News International in 2011.
AFP Photo/Dimitrios Kambouris
