‘You have to not be afraid to ask the obvious questions’: How The Wall Street Journal’s editor is remaking the paper

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. installed Emma Tucker as editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal in February 2023

In a grim news industry, The Wall Street Journal is a rare, consistent bright spot: A big, successful, old-school publication that never needed to figure out a subscription strategy because it was always in the business of selling subscriptions.

But the Murdoch family, which owns the Journal, still wanted to shake things up at the paper. So in February 2023 it installed Emma Tucker, who previously ran the UK’s Sunday Times for the Murdochs, as the Journal’s editor-in-chief. Her mandate: Broaden the paper’s appeal and subscriber base.

For folks who pay attention to this kind of thing, the results are pretty evident. Headlines are punchier and more clickable, and the paper has made a point of writing stories that break through the noise — like a June 4 story quoting Washington insiders who said President Joe Biden was “showing signs of slipping.” Weeks later, Biden turned in a disastrous debate performance.

Tucker has also restaffed the paper and laid off some staff, which has led to complaints from some corners of the workforce. Readers seem to like the changes, though: In the last year subscriptions increased by 11%.

I talked to Tucker about all of that, along with an update on Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was freed from a Russian jail this summer, in the most recent episode of my Channels podcast. You can read edited excerpts of our conversation below:

You were brought in to update the Journal and expand its audience. How do you do that?

It starts with thinking really hard every morning, every day, about our audiences and asking ourselves “What does the audience want from us? What can we give them that is useful that adds value to their lives?”

Everything flows from that. So we’re doing things to make our audiences engaged, rather than thinking about “this is how we do things.”

I think there has been a tendency in established news brands — who for a long time had it all their own way in terms of owning the news — to do things the way they think they should be done. Rather than truly putting themselves in the shoes of the audience.

I assume your predecessors were also thinking about their audience, too. Can you get a little more granular about how your approach is different?

There’s a tendency for established news organizations to think they have to cover everything. And I think as the news landscape evolves, we’re understanding that that’s not necessarily the case.

So some of what we’re thinking about is what do we not do anymore? What’s not useful to Wall Street Journal readers?

I want to read you an email I got from a Journal subscriber. The subject line is “New style for WSJ???” The email links to a story you ran in June: “Luxury Real Estate World Rocked by Rape Allegations Against Star Brokers”.

The person who wrote that to me is my father, who is a longtime Journal subscriber. He’s around Joe Biden’s age. I don’t think he’s going to leave the Journal. But it seems to me that he represents a class of readers who you want to keep — but at the same time, there’s a new audience you’re trying to reach. How do you balance those two constituencies?

Well, your dad picked a very specific example there. But I have to say that that was fundamentally a real estate story. And we know our subscribers, our readers, they absolutely love stories about real estate.

So this was a good example of [telling a story] in a more creative way. One of the interesting things is that — I mean, your dad aside; I hope he doesn’t unsubscribe — we find that when we are creative about how we tell stories with new audiences in mind, the existing audiences tend to love it. At the end of the day, it’s better storytelling.

Are you saying that most readers are not like my dad and that they welcome the new, punchier, headlines and sometimes more salacious story selection?

Absolutely. And it’s borne out by the numbers. I mean, the amount of time that people spend reading The Wall Street Journal has gone up.

I know your subscription numbers are up over the last year: 11% digital, 7% general..

Subscription numbers are up. But what I’m interested in is the amount of time that people spend reading us, the number of visits they pay — and crucially, that the churn rate is down. That’s a sign that people are less likely to unsubscribe because they’re clearly feeling like they’re getting what they need from us.

I want to ask about another story you ran also in June. This headline was Behind Closed Doors. Biden Shows Signs of Slipping. Obviously, that story was borne out less than a month later, at the debate. At the time, there was a lot of criticism from folks who said, “I don’t know about the veracity of this. It’s really telling that the only on-the-record quotes you have saying that Biden is slipping are coming from Republicans like Mike Johnson and Kevin McCarthy.”

I’ve subsequently seen you say you were vindicated in that story. Have you ever gone back and said, “We were right in aggregate, but maybe we could have presented it a different way? Maybe we could have had more skepticism about who was on the record saying that Joe Biden is slipping.”

No, not really. I thought the piece was very, very carefully reported. It’s always going to be tricky to get people to go on the record for a story like that. The reporters involved were on that story for such a long time. They were extremely rigorous. Our standards editor was all over that story. I felt like we had done the work required to break a story of that nature. And I was satisfied with what we did.

Can you describe the pushback you got from the White House as you were reporting that story, and after you published it?

Predictably, they weren’t happy. I mean, we were inundated.

But I felt very confident in the story. I was confident in the reporting. I was confident about the processes we followed. And the fact is it was an important piece of reporting, it was an important piece of journalism, and we were vindicated by it.

We weren’t the only people saying this. But it was very hard to get that story over the line.

Is there an advantage to you being relatively new to the Journal, and being from England, that gives you the freedom to look at something in a different light, or say, “This thing is obvious. How come no one’s saying it out loud?”

Or would any editor have done the same thing?

I think any editor would have done the same thing.

But there’s always an advantage in fresh eyes. So we have brought new people into the newsroom who’ve got fresh eyes. And the combination of their fresh eyes with the talent and expertise that we’ve already got — it’s great. It raises the metabolism in the newsroom, and it’s exciting.

And yeah, I did have totally fresh eyes. So I probably did ask some pretty obvious questions when I got here that probably had people laughing. You have to not be afraid to ask the obvious questions.

You mentioned bringing in new people. You’ve also let a lot of folks go. Those firings get covered a lot in mediaworld. One of the complaints is not just that there’s cuts — it’s that these have been rolling cuts. Are the cuts over now? Are you done restructuring the paper?

As I said right at the start, the news industry is in flux. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve got new challenges. We’re still dealing with all the challenges of the last 10, 20 years. Now we’ve got new challenges coming our way in the shape of generative AI.

But there are other challenges out there. People are switching off from the news. So newsrooms have to be dynamic, just like their audiences are. What I’m doing is continuing to invest in the newsroom. We’ve hired a lot of people. We’ve brought new skills into the newsroom so that we can truly meet the needs of The Wall Street Journal subscribers and future subscribers. We are a dynamic newsroom, just like the landscape we’re seeking to navigate.

Are you done with that restructuring? Do you think you’ve moved all the bodies around that you need?

I don’t think it would be responsible of me to say we’re done. I don’t know what’s coming around the corner, and we have to be nimble. We’ve done a lot of things already. We’re in a good place.

I am mindful, though, that needs change and the economy changes. All sorts of things do. So honestly, “I don’t know” is the answer.

That’s a fair answer. How do you keep morale up? How do you keep everyone rowing in the same direction when they have these pretty legitimate concerns?

Listen, the people who are on board are so on board. And we’ve got some incredible, exciting talent in the newsroom, and they really understand what it is we’re doing. We are a high-performing newsroom. We want the best journalists working for us. And the people here who are doing great work are loving it.

Can you give us an update on Evan Gershkovich, your reporter who was freed this summer after being unjustly jailed in Russia?

He’s back. But he’s keeping a low profile. He’s very much still part of the Journal. He’s doing really well. He’s taking time now to gather his thoughts, get himself sort of fully back into the world. And he’s taking time to write a book as well.

When he is writing again for you on a consistent basis, will he be overseas again?

We’re talking to him about what he does next. It’s going to be up to him. He gets to decide. And the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is there is a place for Evan at The Wall Street Journal. He’s still a very valued member of our newsroom. He needs time now to sort of rehabilitate, write his book. You may or may not see a byline between now and Christmas. He’s doing really well.