Emma Tucker has had her work cut out for her since she was moved from London to New York, and from the editorship of the Sunday Times to the helm of the Wall Street Journal. The step up to the pride of Murdoch’s newspaper stable from its plucky British cousin was enough of a challenge. Then Evan Gershkovich was arrested by Vladimir Putin’s goons, putting the paper’s leadership into full-blown crisis-management mode.

Cockburn understands that the flat-out Tucker has been underwhelmed by the work ethic of her new American colleagues. “What do they all do all day?” she is reportedly prone to wondering out loud. The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom is gargantuan compared to the Sunday Times — and its 1,800 or so journalists constitute a vast army by any editor’s standards. The Journal is famous for a laborious and bureaucratic editing process, just the sort of thing Fleet Street dynamos like Tucker can’t stand about self-serious American journalism.