In episode one of Executive Face Time, Hal Espo, sits down with Wall Street Journal Publisher L. Gordon Crovitz, to explore how the premier business publishing brand continues to innovate and deliver content to their demanding and technologically savvy customers how and when they want it.
WSJ.com is the largest paid subscription news web site in the world with almost almost 800,000 paying subscribers.
Recently, Dow Jones restructured their internal operations, changing the structure of the company from one that had separate print and electronic operations (by channel) to a consumer-focused structure that separates the company by brands, such as the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Barrons.
To do this, they aligned the organization more closely with how their customers perceive and consume company products and services, which is more by brand than by channel.
At the Wall Street Journal, strategic initiatives over the next year will execute on the Consumer Media Group’s mission to deliver the highest quality, branded, business and financial information news and services in ways that are convenient to consumers.
Recognizing the importance of having consumers and advertisers interact with the company across brands and channels, the WSJ intends to adopt a platform neutral strategy that focuses on getting information to people all day long and within their operative workflow.
A simple example means that consumers will read the print edition during their commute in the morning, and then have the online version on their desktop at work.
This evolution is a continuation of the adaptations the WSJ has made since its founding in 1889. At that time, the Journal had a target audience of 200,000 shareholders in publicly traded US companies.
In the 1940s, the WSJ realized that a newspaper narrowly focused on markets and New York was not sustainable. This realization led to the evolution of a national business newspaper that focused on more than just the markets.
While it originally made sense for the WSJ Web site to be a seperate entity from the print publication in the early days, it’s time for an integrated media strategy, approaching the market as a franchise, rather than divide it by channel.
Today’s Journal focuses on how consumers get their information and what they need from the WSJ in a digital age.
- Convenience is important, this includes the physical layout of the print publication and the accessibility of its digital counterpart.
- More interpretation and analysis and less pure facts.
- Better alignment between print and online editions where the print includes more analyses (ie, what does the news mean) while online focuses on what is happening right now.
An important theme running through this interview is that whenever a technological change affects consumer behavior, we overestimate its impact in the short term while underestimating its impact in the long term.
Visit the Software and Information Industry Association Content Division Web Site for a schedule of upcoming episodes of Executive Face Time.
