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Dow Jones appoints Jonathan Wright as Asia MD as Mark Pope moves on after a decade

Pope

Pope

After more than a decade with the company, Mark Pope, the Asia MD of the Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, is moving on.

Pope was named MD of Dow Jones Asia just over a year ago, after being promoted from APAC head of sales for WSJ.

He has worked for Dow jones since 2004 in three continents – as the Journal’s executive director, multimedia sales and product development in New York, as executive director of multimedia sales for EMEA in London, then in Hong Kong as VP of APAC ad sales.

Wright

Wright

Replacing him from Dow Jones’ London operation is Jonathan Wright, who takes on the role of Asia MD and group publisher.

Wright begins in the new role on 1 August, the day after Pope’s last day with the company.

Pope is joining Hong Kong-based startup Tink Labs as chief commercial officer. Tink Labs’ flagship product is Handy, a free mobile solution for travellers.

Wright was previously SVP of commercial partnerships and group publisher at Dow Jones in London. He has been with the company since 2010, having joined from Euromoney.

Katie Vanneck-Smith, Dow Jones’ global MD, said in a note to staff shared with Mumbrella that Wright would “play an integral role in the upcoming launch of the expanded Wall Street Journal in Asia as well as our focus on digital and subscription growth around the region.”

Dow Jones announced last month that it is to launch a new global broadsheet newspaper for readers in Asia and Europe later this year, replacing its region-specific compact editions.

Vanneck-Smith thanked Pope for “his great work and many contributions over the last outstanding 11 years”.

The news comes in the same week that MediaNama reported that the Wall Street Journal’s Indian edition is to close and the company would be downsizing its operations in the country.

Dow Jones has not confirmed that this is happening, but sources say this is part of a global restructure revealed mid-June.

In a memo to staff, the WSJ’s editor in chief Gerard Baker announced the closure of the Bahasa Indonesia website and said that a number of bureaus in Europe and Asia “will be reduced in size”.

“We will reduce significantly the amount of output we do that generates relatively little traffic or subscribers,” he wrote.

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