The Wall Street Journal named a new top editor on Monday, saying it would hand control of the newsroom to Emma Tucker, a longtime editor for Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers in Britain. She replaces Matt Murray, who has led the paper for the past four years, occasionally clashing with the paper’s publisher.

The Journal said Murray would take on a new role, reporting to Robert Thomson, the chief executive of Murdoch’s News Corp, The Journal’s parent company. Tucker starts on February 1, with Murray assisting with the transition through the beginning of March.

“Matt is a superb journalist and leader who has overseen a peerless editorial team that fashioned success for The Journal during an era of extreme vulnerability for media companies and journalism,” Thomson said in a statement.

Tucker, 56, has been the editor of The Sunday Times in London. She has been backed by Thomson and Rebekah Brooks, the head of News Corp’s British arm, according to four people familiar with the internal workings of the company who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tucker worked with Thomson many years ago at The Financial Times, where she started as a reporter, before working as a foreign correspondent and rising to become editor of FT Weekend. In 2007, she joined The Times of London, which is owned by News Corp, and became its deputy editor in 2013. In January 2020, she became editor of The Sunday Times, a sister paper to The Times of London, which operates separately with its own newsroom.

When she was promoted to editor of The Sunday Times, Thomson described her as “a brilliant journalist” who was “digitally savvy and principled”.

Tucker has pushed The Sunday Times to focus on its digital operation and broaden its audience during her tenure, which has included a series of scoops on the financial dealings of the royal family. This year, The Sunday Times reported that King Charles accepted a suitcase containing more than $1 million in cash from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, a Qatari politician.

Murray, 56, who has worked at The Journal for nearly 30 years, took over in June 2018 after rising unrest in the newsroom. His predecessor was Gerard Baker, a Briton who was also at The Sunday Times in London before joining The Journal. Baker had faced complaints in the newsroom, including accusations by some reporters of going easy on then-President Donald J. Trump.

Staff morale largely improved under Murray, whose tenure included the award-winning 2021 Facebook Files series, based on a cache of internal documents, and other impactful work. But he has disagreed with The Jounal’s publisher, Almar Latour, over the paper’s direction and how to grow its subscriber base.

Reports of Tucker’s possible move to The Journal started circulating months ago in the British media, as well last month in Sema for, a start-up news site. The company had been looking to replace the editor for at least a year, according to four people with knowledge of their relationship.

Murray and Tucker declined to be interviewed, and Thomson was not available for an interview.

Murray frustrated some executives with his skepticism over the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, according to two people with knowledge of internal discussions. (The New York Post, another News Corp publication, heavily promoted the story.)

(New York Times News Service)