Marcus Brauchli is departing as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal after a little less than a year on the job, a person familiar with the matter said late Monday.Brauchli's departure, which was first reported on the Web site of Time magazine late Monday, comes about four months after the Journal's parent company Dow Jones & Co. was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate News Corp. Time said the departure could be announced as early as Tuesday.

The person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named since the decision had not yet been made public, said Brauchli was expected to stay on with the company in a yet-to-be-determined role.

Wall Street Journal spokesman Robert Christie declined to comment, as did News Corp. spokeswoman Teri Everett.



Brauchli was named managing editor in April 2007, replacing Paul Steiger, who led the paper since 1991.

Brauchli had been a foreign correspondent for most of his more than two decades at the paper. As deputy managing editor under Steiger, he oversaw the Journal's 2005 redesign, which trimmed its width in a move to cut printing costs by $20 million a year.

The managing editor is the top news executive at the business paper, reporting to Robert Thomson, whom Murdoch named publisher in December, overseeing all editorial operations at Dow Jones.

Brauchli tried to reassure newsroom employees during News Corp.'s efforts to acquire Dow Jones that the Journal would maintain its editorial independence and credibility as part of Murdoch's media empire.

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