Robert Thomson (executive)


Robert Thomson is an Australian journalist. Since January 2013 he has been chief executive of News Corp.

Life

Thomson was born in Torrumbarry, Victoria, and studied at Christian Brothers College in St Kilda East, and at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. One of his ancestors was named Arturo Dell'Oro, and came from Domodossola, in northern Italy. He is married to Wang Ping, the daughter of a general in the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

Career

Thomson started work as a copyboy at The Herald in Melbourne in 1979. In 1983 he became senior feature writer for The Sydney Morning Herald, and two years later became Beijing correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald as well as the Financial Times. Thomson was appointed the Financial Times foreign news editor in 1994 and in 1996 became editor of the Financial Times weekend edition. While at Sydney Morning Herald, Thomson wrote a series on Australian judges, which was published as a book in 1987, The Judges: A Portrait of an Australian Judiciary. In 1998, Thomson became U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times.
In May 2008 he was appointed managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, having previously been the editor of The Times.
He received an honorary doctorate from RMIT University in 2010.
In January 2013 Thomson became the chief executive of News Corp.