The Powers That Be: Daily Best of Puck: Emma Tucker’s WSJ Renaissance
Dec 26, 2025
Emma Tucker, Editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, reshapes journalism with an audience-first approach. She discusses modernizing the historic paper and using analytics to enhance engagement. Tucker emphasizes the importance of bold, distinctive reporting, including notable scoops like Biden's age. The conversation also dives into newsroom restructuring, uniting different desks for collaboration, and contrasting US and UK newsroom cultures. With a focus on lifestyle-adjacent business content, she aims to attract a dynamic readership and drive subscriber growth.
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Double-Down On Your Lane
- The Wall Street Journal must be intensely specialized to win in today's meritocratic digital news market.
- Emma Tucker prioritizes audience-focused, distinctive business and finance coverage to drive engagement and subscriptions.
Let Engagement Guide Commissioning
- Think first about what readers find useful, relevant, and engaging rather than chasing clicks.
- Use engagement metrics like time-on-page and return visits to shape commissioning, not hard KPIs on subscriptions.
Sports Team Restructuring Metaphor
- Tucker compares newsroom restructuring to building a sports team with top players and a youth pipeline.
- She created a News Associates program to train and hire early-career journalists into the Journal's system.