Dow Jones Gives 2 New Posts to Kann

Peter R. Kann, publisher and editorial director of the Wall Street Journal, has been elected to the additional posts of president and chief operating officer of Dow Jones & Co., the business newspaper’s parent company.

Kann takes over the president’s post from Warren H. Phillips, who remains chairman and chief executive. Phillips had been working without a No. 2 executive following the retirement of president and chief operating officer Ray Shaw earlier this year. Phillips had taken the president’s job and left the chief operating officer post unfilled.

He said in the news release that Kann, 46, had “proven himself over many years as an executive of exceptional talent, breadth and judgment.”

Kann joined Dow Jones in 1964 as a reporter in the Journal’s Pittsburgh bureau. He went on to become the newspaper’s reporter in Vietnam and its Hong Kong correspondent. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his 1971 coverage of the India-Pakistan war.

Kann later was the first publisher and editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal. He returned to New York in 1979 and has held a range of senior posts in Dow Jones.

Phillips also announced two changes in the company’s information services group. President Carl M. Valenti has been appointed the additional title of publisher, taking over for William L. Dunn, who was named chairman.

Dow Jones, based in New York, is a leading financial publications and information concern. Its best-known product is the Journal, the nation’s largest daily newspaper with a circulation of nearly 2 million.