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Regarding his departure, Poynter interviewed Raju Narisetti, the former managing editor of The Washington Post who left last week and is heading back to The Wall Street Journal.

Here are a few excerpts:

Why he left:

“…when the opportunity to do what I have done at the Post — get more people to consume more Post journalism than ever before — but now to do it across multiple brands/websites on a global scale at a company that has made profound bets on digital growth came about, it felt like an interesting new challenge to take on.”

On his work at the Post:

“And I tried, with mixed results, to drive home one simple lesson: Big established newsroom cultures can get into trouble when we focus on the rear-view mirror and only talk of how far we have come. I wanted my team, and others willing to listen, to focus the Post on how far it needed to go and how quickly we need to get there.”

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FishbowlNY wrote earlier about SafeHouse, the Wall Street Journal‘s WikiLeaks clone, that has been getting some flak for not actually being like WikiLeaks at all with regard to its most important feature: anonymity. As Gawker noted, SafeHouse has this caveat in its Terms of Use: “we reserve the right to disclose any information about you… without notice…” for a whole host of reasons.

Kind of misses the whole point! This story pretty much spoiled the party of WSJ‘s entire SafeHouse announcement. In fact, the lack of protection for SafeHouse sources in many ways became a bigger story than SafeHouse. So in response, the WSJ has already issued a clarifying statement, which says this about anonymity:

There is nothing more sacred than our sources; we are committed to protecting them to the fullest extent possible under the law. Because there is no way to predict the breadth of information that might be submitted through SafeHouse, the terms of use reserve certain rights in order to provide flexibility to react to extraordinary circumstances. But as always, our number one priority is protecting our sources.

Not entirely comforting. While saying that nothing is more sacred that sources is undoubtedly a fine gesture on WSJ‘s behalf, it’s not quite the same thing as actual contractual language.

The Wall Street Journal has earned some bragging rights. It has the largest circulation in the U.S., and it’s share of the media seems to just keep growing.

Publisher Les Hinton sent a memo to staffers today noting the “many accomplishments to our collective credit.”

Our progress is measurable. Through the first nine months of fiscal 2011, Dow Jones revenue increased 5%. That figure includes strong results from the Journal’s U.S. print edition (ad revenue up 7%, circulation revenue up almost 8%) and its digital editions (ad revenue up 19%, circulation revenue up 22%). Our business-to-business operations, by the third quarter, were showing new strength after the extended impact of the financial crisis.

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Much speculation has been given to the fact that no news organization won the “Breaking News” Pulitzer prize this year, particularly because Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler indicated that there was no winner because none of the entries were good enough.

Some agreed with him that breaking news is now a lost art. Other felt that Twitter really deserved the prize, if that was possible. Larry Kramer wrote that “if the newspaper industry gives up on breaking news, they should just close their doors.”

Now Joel Achenbach argues at The Washington Post that it’s not the fault of the news organizations that no one won, but of the Pulitzer Prize’s own flawed rule system. Both the Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal can claim they were robbed of the breaking news Pulitzer, because both did “tremendous work on the gulf oil spill, which was the biggest breaking news story of the year.” Writes Achenbach:

Now, you might argue that the spill was not truly “breaking” news, except for the first couple of days. You would be mistaken. It was ALL breaking, for three months, every day different from the last.

So why didn’t they win? Achenbach suggests it’s time for a rule change.

I suspect the real problem is that the breaking news category stipulates that the work be “local.” Why make that stipulation? There’s already a separate category for Local News.

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In today’s Media Decoder section, Jeremy W. Peters of NYTimes.com shared some promising news for Wall Street Journal readers: WSJ was just one of two major newspapers in the nation to improve daily circulation in recent months.  The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported a 5 percent drop in weekday circulation for over 600 newspapers from April to September, however The Journal witnessed a 1.8 percent rise in circulation and an average weekday distribution of more than two million (including 450,000 digital subscriptions).  According to a company press release, The Journal upped circulation revenue by 7 percent compared to the April-September 2009 period. 

While The Journal boasted the top weekday readership totals in the country, some other New York-based titles maintained high circulation numbers despite the slow decline of newspaper industry in the U.S.  Other than WSJ, The New York Times (third), New York Daily News (sixth), and New York Post (seventh) ranked among the country’s top seven papers in terms of weekday circulation.  Although these newspapers — along with other heavyweights like USA Today and Los Angeles Times — sold plenty of issues over the past six months, The Journal was joined only by The Dallas Morning News in posting distribution growth since this past spring.

Don’t cry too hard for Marcus Brauchli, the former Wall Street Journal editor who resigned from the paper four months after Rupert Murdoch acquired it from the Bancroft family.

Now executive editor at The Washington Post, it’s always been a closely-guarded secret how much Brauchli got to walk away from his position, but the new book on the Murdoch/Bancroft saga by Sarah Ellison has finally revealed the number to be $6.4 million.

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We wonder how the Bancroft family would be feeling about this (if they weren’t too busy enjoying their $60 per share right now): News Corp.‘s Wall Street Journal has launched a travel service called WSJtravel, which will offer over 50 “premiere” travel packages to such exotic locations as Vietnam (for a study in local food), Tuscany (to stay in 1,0000-year-old castle and take seminars on books), and Napa Valley (to get wasted with class).

While we’ve been talking about Condé Nast possibly lending out its name for product licensing, it almost seems ingenious for The Wall Street Journal to pair with a travel agency and do it first. We’re happy to see media companies trying out new sources of revenue. And if it works, so much the better.

Full press release after the jump.

Previously: How To Lose Your Brand Identity And Influence Consumers: A Conde Story

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