Four months after buying Dow Jones for $5bn, Rupert Murdoch has cemented his influence over the media group’s flagship Wall Street Journal with the resignation on Tuesday of Marcus Brauchli, the newspaper’s managing editor.

In a letter to staff, Mr Brauchli, who was promoted to the paper’s top editorial job a year ago, cast his departure as another chapter in the takeover by Mr Murdoch’s News Corp. “I am proud to have been part of this exceptionally talented team,” he wrote. “But now that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe that the new owners should have a managing editor of their choice.”