His experience ranges from stints at one of News Corporation’s most serious papers, The Times, to working at some of its raciest. He endured a recent press scandal involving a News of the World reporter being jailed for intercepting the voice mail of some of the royal family’s staff.

Thomson, 46, a former reporter and editor at The Financial Times, became the editor of The Times of London in 2002. He is also a good friend of Marcus W Brauchli, the managing editor of The Journal. Both Thomson and Hinton have worked in the US for long periods of time. Zannino, 49, who became chief executive almost two years ago, is widely credited with making Dow Jones run more efficiently. He led a shift toward electronic media and away from ink and paper. Under him, Dow Jones bought MarketWatch.com and the half of the Factiva archive service that it did not already own, and sold several small newspapers.

As a relative newcomer to publishing who had spent much of his career in the apparel industry — and the first non-journalist to run Dow Jones since the 1930s — Zannino was often viewed skeptically. That was especially so after Murdoch’s $5 billion-offer surfaced last spring, when Zannino was generally seen as promoting a deal that much of the newsroom opposed.

James Ottaway, a former Dow Jones executive and board member, and a major shareholder who bitterly opposed the sale to Murdoch, praised Zannino. “While Rich and I disagreed completely on his support for the sale of Dow Jones, I think he did a very good job,” Ottaway said.