Wall Street Journal Names Emma Tucker Its First Female Editor-in-Chief
British journalist Emma Tucker is the next editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires — the first female in the top editorial role at the News Corp business outlets.
Tucker, currently editor of the U.K.’s Sunday Times (which also is owned by News Corp), will take over the role from Matt Murray early next year. Tucker will assume the position as EIC of the Journal and Dow Jones Newswires on Feb. 1, 2023. Murray will assist her in the transition until March 1, when he will take on a new senior role managing “critical growth projects” at News Corp, reporting to CEO Robert Thomson, the company announced.
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Under Tucker’s tenure, the Sunday Times’ digital readership more than doubled, according to News Corp. The Times and the Sunday Times have achieved record profitability, and digital subscriptions grew from 320,000 as of the end of 2019 to approximately 450,000 by the end of September 2022, an increase of more than 40%, the company said. In the most recent quarter, the titles saw a 23% increase in digital subscriptions.
“Matt is a superb journalist and leader who has overseen a peerless editorial team that fashioned success for the Journal during an era of extreme vulnerability for media companies and journalism,” Thomson said in announcing the changes Monday. “Emma is a brilliant, inspiring editor, with digital nous and the highest standards of integrity. She has been a thoughtful custodian of The Sunday Times and will bring verve and virtue to Dow Jones.”
Murray has served as editor-in-chief of the WSJ and Dow Jones Newswires in June 2018. During that time, the Journal won the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting in 2019 for its coverage of hush-money payments to two women who alleged they had affairs with Donald Trump. In addition, the WSJ published the Facebook Files expose series as well as investigations into GameStop, TikTok, PG&E, and the financial conflicts of interest of federal judges and other government officials; and won its first News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2020.
Since 2018, digital-only subscriptions to the Journal doubled, growing from about 1.6 million as of the quarter ended June 2018 to nearly 3.2 million as of third quarter of 2022.
Tucker said in a statement: “As a longtime admirer and reader of the brilliant journalism of the Wall Street Journal, it is my honor to edit this great newspaper. With some the best writers and the wisest minds on its staff, this impactful publication continues to set the agenda and reach ever-wider digital audiences around the world.”
Tucker, who is 56, became editor of the Sunday Times in January 2020. She joined the newspaper in 2007 as associate features editor, and the following year she became editor of Times2, a daily features supplement to the Times. In 2012, she was promoted to editorial director and the following year was appointed deputy editor of the Times. Prior to joining the Times, Tucker worked at the Financial Times, where she began as a graduate trainee, spent four years as U.K. economics reporter. She went to school in East Sussex and New Mexico, then studied at Oxford University.
The five-person Dow Jones Special Committee, formed in 2007 to monitor editorial standards and ethics issues at the Wall Street Journal, unanimously approved Tucker’s appointment, News Corp said.
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