NEW YORK — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. named Robert Thomson managing editor of The Wall Street Journal yesterday, following the departure last month of Marcus Brauchli after less than a year on the job.

Thomson was brought in last December as publisher of the Journal after News Corp. bought the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones & Co., for $5 billion.

Thomson, a former editor of News Corp.'s The Times newspaper in London, had been widely seen as the likely candidate to succeed Brauchli. Brauchli didn't comment publicly about his departure at the time but said in a statement that he had come to believe that "the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing."

Since closing the purchase of the paper, News Corp. has been moving quickly to reshape the Journal with a greater focus on general and political news and to compete more aggressively with The New York Times for national readers and advertisers.

Les Hinton, the chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., will assume Thomson's role as publisher of The Wall Street Journal.