MORE TURMOIL AT NEWS CORP’S U.K. OPERATIONS

The scandal plaguing News Corp’s British newspapers has claimed another victim — this time, the very man who has been working hard to set the ship on an even keel again. Early today (Monday) Tom Mockridge, a 21-year-veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate, resigned as CEO of News International, the unit that served as a corporate umbrella for the British newspapers, which include the Sun and the Sunday Sun, and the Times and the Sunday Times, and, until it was shut down in the wake of a telephone-hacking scandal, the Sunday tabloid, News of the World. The announcement of his resignation came one day after it was reported that Robert Thomson, currently the top editor at the Wall Street Journal, would become CEO of the publishing company that will result from Murdoch’s plan to “demerge” his publishing companies from his entertainment companies. In a message to News International’s staff, Mockridge said that the “new structure does not offer me a role I am comfortable with.”