Look for a new "Business" section in the WSJ

Maybe passing on that recent offer to extend my Wall Street Journal subscription for two more years at the current rate will turn out to be a good decision.

By then, who knows what the paper will look like.

The political content moving forward in the first section of the print edition over the last few months was something that was eventually going to be mentioned here. It's kind of like a game now - count the business articles in the first part of the paper and see if you have to use one hand or two.

The next thing you know they'll just have a separate section titled "Business".

And that could come sooner than you think according to this report in, well, the Wall Street Journal:

Editor Out as Murdoch Speeds Change at WSJ
By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO, MERISSA MARR and SAM SCHECHNER
April 23, 2008

Four months after buying The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. is poised to choose its own person to run its news pages.

Marcus Brauchli, who took over as Journal managing editor less than a year ago, confirmed Tuesday he was stepping down. "Now that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing," he said in a note to the staff.

Mr. Brauchli's departure likely heralds a more dramatic shake-up at the Journal, which has seen a shift in focus since News Corp. bought the Journal's parent, Dow Jones & Co., in December for $5.16 billion. In recent months, the paper has begun putting more emphasis on shorter news stories and more general news, as part of a push by News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to broaden readership and to compete more directly with the New York Times.

Mr. Murdoch was impatient with the pace of change, say people close to the situation, and whoever takes over is apt to speed up the change process. The identity of the next editor isn't clear. Dow Jones said in a statement it would "begin a search for Mr. Brauchli's replacement immediately."

Current Journal publisher and former Times of London editor Robert Thomson isn't expected to take the title of interim managing editor, but he may take a more active role in the newsroom in the meantime.

About 10 days ago, Mr. Thomson and Dow Jones Chief Executive Officer Leslie Hinton summoned Mr. Brauchli to a meeting about his future, according to people familiar with the situation. They suggested it might be better to have their own person running the newspaper, these people say. He agreed, these people say, and the two sides began talking about his next step, and about a financial package.

It must be weird writing about the company you work for when the company you work for is a major newspaper. In this case, "people familiar with the situation" could be anyone hanging around the water cooler with a juicy rumor.