Murdoch-friendly Money & Investing section chief Nik Deogun is said to be poised for promotion to deputy managing editor for foreign coverage. There is also speculation cold-hearted DC bureau chief John Bussey may get a promotion.

The full email from our tipster:

Watch for announcement today or soon that page one staff - what used
to be the backbone of the WSJ and its strong features - will be merged
with news desk and current editor Mike Williams will be roving feats
editor; that nik deogun will move up to run foreign and become a
deputy ME; bussey may get something big too. So the post-revolutionary
shakeout continues to be revolutionary. Lots of confusion and
uncertainty inside paper. Olf guard... bemused by three column lead stories about wachovia ceo's and Libor
studies and disappearance of stories that appeal beyond the circle of
murdoch's friends in the global elite

The Page One change, at least, would be perfectly in line with the newsy but less polished — and, arguably, far less analytic — direction Thomson is taking the paper. Can anyone shed more light on this rumored re-org? ryan@gawker.com

1. He's cheap. A reporting trip to Cincinnati early in his career was extended beyond the day-trip he'd packed for. Rather than buying an extra pack of underwear, Bussey reputedly wore reused the same socks and shorts the whole week, washing the items and leaving them up to dry overnight. Innocent enough, but this story isn't: when bureau chief in Tokyo, where he became friends with Robert Thomson, one of Bussey's reporters lost his father. Rather than pay for a ticket back to the US at such short notice, Bussey wanted the reporter to wait a week until flights were cheaper, legend has it.

2. He's cold. Bussey's a cropped-haired ascetic these days, totally consumed by his career. But he did once dip into the Journal's typically isolated dating pool. (The newspaper was run for many years like the Philippines under Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos—by Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann and his wife, Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliot House.) Before Wendy Steiger (pictured showing off her bosom in this blog photo) married managing editor Paul Steiger, she was Bussey's girlfriend. He famously broke up with her while in the shower. It's not clear who dumped whom, but Bussey's dry wit overcame any heartbreak. When Wendy moved on to his boss, Bussey remarked: "smart career move."

3. He sent reporter Danny Pearl to his death at the hands of Islamic extremists in Pakistan in 2002. This charge is particularly unfair—and based entirely on the understandably bitter account of Pearl's wife, Mariane. In the movie of her book, A Mighty Heart, Bussey is portrayed as an ineffectual manager who ignored warnings of the dangers to journalists in war zones and responded to the first report of Danny Pearl's disappearance with seeming indifference. "What do you think we should do?" his character asks Angelina Jolie's Mariane Pearl in the movie. A Mighty Heart does acknowledge that Bussey flew to Karachi to help with the hopeless rescue effort; it doesn't portray the breakdown he suffered after video of Pearl's brutal execution surfaced, after which the Journal put him out to pasture in Hong Kong. The positive spin: Bussey has been mellowed by the trauma of Pearl's death and a later demotion when rival Marcus Brauchli took over the Journal. He's no longer so obnoxiously driven; just driven.

4. But he's still a fusspot. Bussey's DC detractors say he never discusses stories and the biggest political scoop of his tenure—news of Mark Penn's demotion by Hillary Clinton—was pushed by Jerry Seib, his predecessor. That's debatable: journalists always complain that their precious stories don't get the play and attention they deserve. But the bureau chief's fusspottery—he's particularly preoccupied by sandwich counts at lunches for visiting bigwigs—makes it easy to mock his priorities. Writes a tipster: "Bussey's main initiative since Marcus installed him as Washington buro chief a few months ago has been his crusade to clean up the office. Seriously. He's obsessed with throwing out books and papers. He has this big blue bin on roller wheels that he puts next to offending reporters' desks and hectors them to throw everything away."

Robert Thomson, former editor of Murdoch's London Times, is a charmer, as we've written. (Disclosure, I used to work for him at the Financial Times.) A former colleague reported that the Times newsroom was "the happiest place to work on Fleet Street." But his emollient side was not so obviously on display at Monday's meeting: according to two attendees, Thomson berated the assembled reporters for their lack of aggression in reporting news and their arrogance. The Journal, he said, took this attitude: "If we haven't written about it, it's not news."

Now that is apparently a general complaint of Murdoch and his henchmen, who want the Journal to compete more fiercely for both political and business scoops—and the criticism not entirely unwarranted. Thomson, Australian and 30 years to the day Murdoch's junior, is the product of the more robust newsroom cultures of Sydney and London; Journal reporters are unaccustomed to such frank talk from their bosses. And all that Thomson meant to say—we understand—was that the Journal was now in an ultra-competitive world in which it had to be conscious of the challengers, old and new. Uncontroversial enough.

But his sensitive audience took his remarks the wrong way. The newspaper had just that morning published an exclusive on the gigantic $23bn bid by Mars and Warren Buffett for Wrigley, the chewing gum makers. According to one attendee, stock market reporter Jim Browning said he was "personally offended" by the suggestion that the newspaper's reporters didn't try to break news. Thomson's joke—that former managing editor Paul Steiger was extremely competitive on the softball field—failed to defuse the tension.

The Journal is still reeling after News Corporation executives pushed out Marcus Brauchli in order to install a more amenable managing editor at the paper. It has only been a week. Until the new hierarchy is clear, the staff will naturally be jumpy and quick to take offense. Murdoch's newspaper acquisition drive still makes as much sense as we thought a week ago. However, if News Corporation can't even win over the potential collaborators, the occupation of the Journal will be all the more bitter. The infighting is already pretty ugly.

• Nik Deogun, the head of Money & Investing and widely seen as a potential quisling, is now telling colleagues he's not in line for the managing editor job. Some of his more fevered internal critics thought they detected glee on the day Marcus Brauchli's departure became public.
• Paul Steiger and Marcus Brauchli, the last two managing editors of the independent Journal, have taken the brunt of newsroom anger. "Steiger who is being villified for advocating the sale to Murdoch when he had so much to gain from it. This guy was beloved and now is being talked about like a greedy bastard who is no different than the Wall Street guys brought down on his watch. People are talking about how he who sold out so he could afford his young 30-something wife." (Here's her bosom-revealing blog.)
• Kathryn Kranhold, the Journal's much-respected reporter on GE, has quit with no new job in the offing. "It's a huge loss," says a colleague.
• Bill Grueskin, deputy managing editor, has commissioned an investigative piece on the eviction of Marcus Brauchli—and the special committee that was supposed to protect the Journal's editorial independence from Murdoch. (In charge is Steve Stecklow, one of the paper's most rabid investigative reporters.) But ungenerous colleagues suspect his position is vulnerable, and Grueskin is merely casting himself as a defender of the Journal's integrity, and a martyr.
• John Bussey, the DC bureau chief, is touted by allies as a candidate for the top editorial job. But he must be one of the most widely disliked executives at the paper: since we mentioned his name, the hostile tips have outnumbered the plaudits by about 2 to 1. More on Bussey later.
• Alix Freedman, supposed guardian of the Journal's ethics, was forced to explain to a group of new employees why she had killed the newspaper's exclusive on the ouster of Brauchli. At the orientation, she explained that the paper didn't like to air its "dirty laundry". Um, isn't that what newspapers are supposed to do?