The British Aren’t Coming. They’re Here.

The news business is in upheaval. A presidential election is barreling down the pike. Facing financial challenges and political division, several of America’s largest news organizations have turned over the reins to editors who prize relentless reporting on a budget.

And they all happen to be British.

Will Lewis, a veteran of London’s Daily Telegraph and News UK, is now the chief executive of The Washington Post, where reporters have raised questions about his Fleet Street ethics. He recently ousted the paper’s American editor and replaced her with a former colleague from The Telegraph, dumbfounding American reporters who had never heard of him.

Emma Tucker (formerly of The Sunday Times) took over The Wall Street Journal last year, shortly after Mark Thompson (formerly of the BBC) became chairman of CNN, where he has ordered an American remake of the long-running BBC comedy quiz show “Have I Got News for You.”

They joined a slew of Brits already ensconced in the American media establishment. Michael Bloomberg, a noted Anglophile, hired John Micklethwait (former editor of the London-based Economist) in 2015 to run Bloomberg News. Rupert Murdoch tapped Keith Poole (The Sun and The Daily Mail) to edit The New York Post in 2021, the same year that The Associated Press named an Englishwoman, Daisy Veerasingham, as its chief executive.

“We are the ultimate trophies for American billionaires,” joked Joanna Coles, the English-born editor who in April became head of The Daily Beast, the online news outlet itself named after a newspaper in an Evelyn Waugh novel. Ms. Coles has not hesitated to recruit more of her compatriots, installing a Scot as editor in chief and a Guardian reporter as Washington bureau chief.

“We are loading up on Brits,” she said in an interview.