The Brits Invade US Newsrooms With a ‘Killer Instinct’ and Fleet Street Ethics

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Robert Winnett, the soon-to-be executive editor of the Washington Post, is the latest British journalist to be put in charge of a U.S. news outlet.

British news media invasion
(Clockwise from left) Former News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, Washington Post CEO Will Lewis, Post upcoming Executive Editor Robert Winnett, CNN CEO Mark Thompson and Emma Tucker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal. (Chris Smith/TheWrap)

The crisis in American news media has led to an unexpected result in a very short time: The invasion of executive news suites by British editors, who experts say bring a “killer instinct” to news gathering, while notably downgrading the diversity quotient in news leadership.

Most recently with the appointment of Will Lewis as the publisher and CEO of the Washington Post — and his latest restructuring plan, featuring the appointment of Fleet Street-bred editor Robert Winnett as executive editor after the election — British players are gaining a significant foothold in the U.S. media industry. 

These latest U.K. natives arrive just months after a growing list of others — CNN’s CEO Mark Thompson, The Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker, Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, The Daily Beast’s content chief Joanna Coles and the outlet’s new executive editor Hugh Dougherty.

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