Emma Tucker’s Wall Street Journal laid off staff in its Hong Kong bureau, and three company insiders said they were bracing for more cuts in the newsroom.
The insider speculation about potential further cuts centered on the London office and the standards and ethics team, a dedicated unit that ensures stories meet the paper’s quality bar.
The Hong Kong layoffs affected seven editors on a desk that puts finishing touches on stories before they’re published, two sources said. People with direct knowledge said they believed the company was looking to save money by shifting the work to other offices. A WSJ spokesperson declined to comment.
The Hong Kong cuts came shortly after Tucker revealed in September her plan to revive the newsroom with an “audience-first” model, which has fueled speculation that a reorg could be on the way.
Hong Kong is the latest example of cuts to the storied newsroom that have dribbled out over the past few months, in keeping with the Journal’s practice of trimming small numbers of people.
“It’s scary,” one insider said. “They clearly don’t feel qualms about letting people go.”
The stage for reductions was set earlier in the year when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the Journal’s parent company, announced there would be a 5% reduction across all its businesses. But many Journal staffers assumed that the crown jewel’s newsroom would be relatively spared.
Tucker has already shaken up the top editor ranks since becoming editor in chief of the paper in February, installing new people from her alma mater The Sunday Times in London, and parting ways with longtime editors Karen Pensiero, Neal Lipschutz, Jason Anders, and Page 1 editor Matthew Rose.
She’s also made some changes to the news product, like doing away with honorifics (like Mr. or Ms.) and corporate designations (like Co. or Inc.) to streamline writing. She’s encouraged reporters to pursue livelier pieces and discouraged commodity stories.
Tucker’s 18-page content plan, shared with staff during a town hall in September, was short on details. Tucker called for the Journal to be an “audience-first publication” that’s “for people who mean business,” which some staff derided as corporate-sounding.
“We must significantly increase engagement with our digital products,” the plan exhorted, and go “deep over broad, find the WSJ angle, stop ‘flooding the zone,’ more ‘day 2’ on day 1,” as well as “focus specialists on getting the scoop and telling readers what it means.”
It laid out four guiding principles: putting the reader first, giving readers value, being purposeful, and empowering staff.
Meanwhile, editors have been joining reporters in filing articles, at Tucker’s encouragement, and staff are newly absorbed with how stories are performing, a change for a newsroom where reporters traditionally have been relatively insulated from such metrics.
“If your story doesn’t get a lot of hits, it’s not good,” another insider fretted. “There’s a lot of concern about that. It’s touching and hitting everybody. Everybody’s talking about it.”
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