Getting Things Done
Part Seven: Emma Tucker's Wall Street Journal
Recently, Emma Tucker, the editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal was interviewed by Press Gazette, a widely read newsletter on journalism, based in the U.K.. Tucker reported on how much the Journal has grown in subscribers since she took over at the start of 2023, moving from the editorship of The Sunday Times in London. These are two of the flagship publications controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Overall, she said, print and digital subscriptions have increased by 20 percent to 4.68 million. While that is roughly a third of the number of the New York Times’s subscribers, it is about twice the reported number for the Washington Post.
Here is Tucker’s explanation for why that increase has happened:
The Wall Street Journal, she said on her arrival, would give readers the “new distinctive, useful, compelling, relevant journalism” they needed.
“I asked the newsroom to get behind that strategy. I also made structural changes to the newsroom to enable it to get behind that strategy. They did, and the results have been incredibly good.
“I would never rest on my laurels, and there’s still work to be done, but the strategy is working. It just goes to show you when a newsroom as, frankly, brilliant as the Wall Street Journal’s gets collectively behind a very clear strategy, you get results.”
There are two observations to be made about Tucker’s comments and her success.
I have only met her once, soon after she arrived, at a friend’s one-table dinner of probably sixteen people, most of whom were connected, one way or another, to the New York–based media. I was amazed at how critical Tucker was of the news organization she was leading. She took on Washington coverage, the foreign report, the Saturday review section (a particular favorite of mine), and the overall desultory vibe.
The editorial pages and book reviews are under the long-time aegis of Paul Gigot and adhere to a right-wing or conservative perspective that is usually less vituperative than the language and politics of Trump-era MAGA. She had no comments on that part of the Journal.
I wondered whether it was really a good idea for Tucker to trash her news organization among people who might well spread the word that could be embarrassing to her. I thought not, although I recognized that she must have been given a mandate from Murdoch to shake things up.
And that was my second thought. Stipulate that, on the whole, I think Murdoch’s impact on the media has been profound and negative. Fox News is the source, in many ways, of America’s crisis of politics and morality.
But Murdoch is driven by what he considers news values for his businesses, which is why in the almost twenty years he has owned Dow Jones and the Journal, the news organization has mostly maintained its stature at the higher end of American journalism.
One episode in particular impressed me. Murdoch had invested a reported $125 million in Elizabeth Holmes’s biotech startup Theranos, which she claimed would transform medicine. It was the Journal’s reporting that revealed her company to be a fraud and eventually sent her to prison.
As recounted in John Carreyrou’s brilliant book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, Holmes came to New York to plead with Murdoch to stop the Journal’s coverage. Among other things, she said, Murdoch had all that money at risk.
He refused, specifically telling her, according to Carreyrou, who was then a Journal reporter, that he would not interfere with the news coverage.
Again, Rupert Murdoch’s approach to journalism is far from pristine, but he does understand what makes news — and what drives subscriptions and advertising to his company.
Here’s my aside: As I have written before, Jeff Bezos is an entrepreneurial genius, but he has shown, conclusively, that he does not understand that successful journalism comes from the energy and distinctive quality of its content, even in the data-driven digital world.
(That The Washington Post won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service on May 3, the same day that Bezos is hosting the Met Gala does suggest ironic destiny. )
As a daily reader of the Wall Street Journal’s online news output and, leisurely, in print on Saturday, I look forward to it (after my daily absorption of the New York Times and Financial Times) because there are news and features I find intriguing and have not already read elsewhere.
A story about the “lewd” birthday greeting that Donald Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 led the president to sue the Journal for $10 billion, except that it turned out the greeting was in the extensive files on Epstein that were released over time. The suit was later dismissed.
Scandalous Trump revelations are frequent. But it was also the case that the most thorough coverage of Joe Biden’s aging was in the Journal and was immediately ascribed to the animus and bias of the Murdoch forces, a foray into pro-Trumpism.
In fact, the record and history shows that compelling journalism is going to be an equal opportunity offender of the powers that be, which Tucker clearly recognizes. And she and her invigorated newsroom are bringing that and more to the impressive news organization that the Wall Street Journal has become.
