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October 23, 2008
WSJ On the Move
Edelman hosted Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson for breakfast this morning in New York City. Here are a few of his most important observations:
1) The Big Brand—Digital must work together with print and wire service to maximize the WSJ brand. In the new office of the WSJ in Midtown Manhattan, the editors of the print paper, WSJ.com, MarketWatch and news services will all sit together. “Every journalist must aim to be a Renaissance reporter, in web, audio, video and print. The paper must be connected to what is on the web site. Every journalist is part of this extraordinary experiment.”
2) Competitive Set—The WSJ has stepped up its global coverage in the US edition, “to put the world into perspective,” and to compete with the Financial Times. The increased focus on government and Washington DC is intended to “reach the non-business folks who read the NY Times.” There is also an opportunity to have the WSJ become the primary place for business news in local markets where the traditional newspapers have culled their financial reporters in recent cutbacks.
3) Hierarchy of Content—The WSJ will continue to have a mixed regime of free and paid content on the web. The theory is the “more specialized the data, the more we can charge. So if there is a customized search function tied to micro payment software, we can monetize the content.”
4) Digital is Global—The total global on-line audience for the WSJ.com in the past month was 24.5 million unique visitors, over half from outside the USA. The Chinese CWSJ.com site had a six fold increase in its number of unique visitors in the past year from 400,000 to 2.4 million. There are now Indian and Japanese WSJ home pages with distinct content.
5) The Editorial Page—The paper has maintained the “church and state” separation of editorial and commentary. Thomson is particularly proud of the unique WSJ technique of reporting as well as advocating within its expanded three pages of commentary.
6) News Production—“We are trying to speed up the metabolism, to create within the journalistic community a real sense of competition. We need to be ahead of the other media all of the time.” Thomson also noted that journalists are being given a new goal, “relevance to readers.” He is concerned that serious companies are not getting enough coverage; that there may be too much emphasis on personal finance. He is keen to get more stories from the regional bureaus, because the articles lend personality to the paper while offering national insight.
7) Future of Newspapers—He is very confident about the WSJ’s future, noting that advertising was above plan for September. “We need to find new sources of revenue, such as a foreign exchange news service in Japan that is now very popular with individual Japanese investors. We must offer mobile delivery of content because the speed of delivery changes the nature of the content itself.” He suggested that content will increasingly be repurposed for the small mobile screen. He added that newspapers generally will have to be better about qualitatively analyzing audiences, to fight the perception of commoditization of readers (“our readers are smart and affluent”).
8) On Government’s Role in Business—Thomson believes that more regulation is inevitable, particularly in financial markets. What is less clear is the process by which regulation is enacted. “Will there be an active, healthy debate or will it just roll through the Congress?” He questioned the utility of “sudden measures” such as the temporary ban on shorting of financial stocks.
The advent of the Murdoch team has brought real dynamism and imagination to the paper. The investment in globalization, the determination to operate across platform and the commitment to editorial excellence are exciting strategic pillars. Those of us in the PR community will need to recognize the need for speed, the desire to be simultaneously global/local and the utility of visual support materials that facilitate story-telling.
Posted by Edelman at October 23, 2008 9:41 AM |
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Comments
Richard, thanks for sharing these blog posts with all of us. You really put a lot of thought into the media world. This is a great summary of the big changes that are happening at WSJ and the rest of the publications. I'm a partner in a Silicon Valley PR firm and I've been following changes to print publications intently.
One of the topics we discuss in our office is the decline of the reporting style in newspapers and magazines. We hire reporters and my business partner is the former assistant dean for the UC Berkeley graduate journalism school. We really respect journalists.
However, the reality I'm seeing is that journalism and publications like WSJ are in inevitable decline.
I spent some time analyzing how Google interacts with the media, including online media. It appears that they are using bloggers as a primary media target, not print publications. Sixty days after the launch of the Google Chrome browser, there are 450,000 independent blog posts about it. Google released the information about the browser to bloggers before their press conference. I've written up more analysis here: http://is.gd/6mJk
Posted by: Craig Oda at November 5, 2008 11:09 AM