With a week to go before News Corporation takes control of Dow Jones & Company, there are already management changes under way. Richard F Zannino, Dow Jones’s chief executive, will leave the company after staying for a time to help with the transition.

People briefed on the matter said that Zannino and The Wall Street Journal publisher L Gordon Crovitz would be succeeded by trusted lieutenants of Rupert Murdoch soon after the takeover was complete. Executives at both companies say there will be a broader sweep of the upper echelon at Dow Jones in the next few weeks, both to eliminate duplication and to make way for Murdoch’s people.

Zannino will be succeeded by Les Hinton, the executive chairman of News International - which includes News Corporation’s British newspapers: The Times of London, The Sunday Times, The News of the World and The Sun. Zannino’s departure was announced by the company a week ahead of the shareholder vote that is expected to seal the deal. He will stay on through a transition period.

As has been widely anticipated, Robert J Thomson, editor of The Times of London, will take the place of Crovitz, publisher of The Journal. Both Dow Jones and Crovitz declined to make any statement about his future, but he will also step aside soon, according to people briefed on the matter. It was unclear whether he would remain with the company in some other capacity.

Zannino said the choice to leave was his; others at Dow Jones were divided as to whether that was so, while some said the decision was mutual. Murdoch has a history of putting his loyalists atop newly acquired operations. At the same time, Zannino and people who work with him said he has no desire to be running one unit — even a large one — of a much larger corporation. Hinton, 63, a former reporter who has worked under Murdoch since the 1960s, has cut costs at News Corporation’s British papers and more tightly integrated their operations — experience that could help fold Dow Jones into its new parent.

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