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On Tuesday, Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz discussed the News Corp.-Dow Jones & Co. merger at PaidContent.org’s Future of Business Media event at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York City. Some highlights:
On paid vs. free and rumors that WSJ.com will go all free: “The opportunity for the Journal brand is this …WSJ is already the best business Web site. Can we also have the biggest Web site? Our traffic already puts us in league with the financial portals, but we’re not there yet. Making the journalism freely available is on the path to accomplishing that goal.” On premium products like Factiva, Venture One, etc. and how they play a role: “People understand the value of information. We have over a half billion dollars in subscription revenues to our premium database products. Sometimes the more vertical you get, there can be very serious subscription revenues.” On the integration of Dow Jones products: "The resize of the print product is really the least significant event of the year. The bigger project was merging the missions of the print and online brands of WSJ." Today is the 10th anniversary of Marketwatch. Significance of that deal? "The acquisition was the biggest deal Dow Jones had made in 20 years. It was a good way for our readers to follow their investments in real time. In 1997, if you wanted real-time access to market news, really you had to be a financial professional. Ten years later, the information and tools available at Marketwatch are superior to the tools available to those professionals 10 years ago. It gets a large percentage of our page views, which has been big for advertisers. Marketwatch’s forays into video and other rich media has educated Dow Jones as well." On the advertiser proposition for WSJ in 2007: “The conversation goes like this: We reach more than 20 million of the most affluent financial professionals. We help advertisers put back together what had become a fragmented audience.” Murdoch mentioned expanding in verticals. What does he mean? "The opportunity for us is how do we use a new medium to serve deeper audiences as well. First launch in that space is our law blog." On integration and News Corp.'s role: “Acquisition by News Corp. will speed up our integration. Their investment time frames are much different and more aggressive than ours.” On News Corp. deal and a greater global reach: "Dow Jones now is published in different languages. News Corp. will give us an even greater reach into other languages, at a much more rapid pace thanks to News Corp.’s global reach." Final question from Rafat Ali, publisher and editor of PaidContent.org, on a specific date when the WSJ will go free: “As anybody who uses Google will know, a lot of Journal content is already available for free. We’re looking at the question of what is the right business model. We’ve had a 25% increase in subscribers even as we have expanded this more hybrid model of free/paid.” Categories Deal Video
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