News Corp looks to Bloomberg for new executive News Corp is in talks with Lex Fenwick, a former Bloomberg chief executive, to become chief executive of Dow Jones and fill a position that has been empty for six months, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. News Corp and Bloomberg declined to comment, but one person described the talks as "serious discussions," with another cautioning that they could fall apart. The appointment, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would end an internal and external search triggered by the resignation last July of Les Hinton, who took over as publisher of the Wall Street Journal after News Corp's 2007 acquisition of Dow Jones. Mr Hinton stepped down in the midst of the phone hacking crisis at News Corp's UK newspaper arm, which he had run for 12 years, saying in a letter to Rupert Murdoch, the group chairman of whom he had been a colleague of for more than 50 years, that he had been "ignorant of what apparently happened." The talks with Mr Fenwick surprised some media executives, who noted his limited experience with advertising, one of the biggest sources of revenue for the Wall Street Journal, and with editorial operations. Bloomberg News was under the command of Matt Winkler while Mr Fenwick was chief executive. Dow Jones" business-to-business operations have had less prominence than its flagship newspaper since the News Corp takeover, and it has sold its indexes business. Mr Fenwick took over as chief executive of Bloomberg in 2001 when Mike Bloomberg, its founder, stood down to become mayor of New York City. Mr Fenwick stepped aside in 2008 to set up Bloomberg Ventures, an incubator for start-ups. The British-born executive joined the financial data provider in 1987 and established a reputation as one of Bloomberg's most successful sales people, building its market share while running its fast-growing European sales operation from London, the traditional stronghold of Reuters. As chief executive, his desk sat with the customer services team in the middle of Bloomberg's open-plan offices, and in the 2001-2003 downturn following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the company boasted growth every month. News Corp's talks with Mr Fenwick, who has a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense manager, suggest that Mr Murdoch is again looking beyond the traditional news business to fill a vacancy in one of its newspaper operations. In the last year, he has brought Tom Mockridge from Sky Italia to run News International in London and appointed Kim Williams, another television executive from Foxtel, to be chief executive of News Ltd in Australia. Since July, Dow Jones has been run by Todd Larsen, its president under Mr Hinton. At Bloomberg Ventures, Mr Fenwick launched Bloomberg Link, an events business, and started to develop the Bloomberg Institute, a training and testing business for financial professionals. Dow Jones and Bloomberg compete with the Financial Times.