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FT.com: Dow Jones planning digital overhaul of B2B activities

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:33:33 +0000

Dow Jones is planning a “digital overhaul” of its business to business activities, reports the Financial Times.

In its report (requires registration), the FT quotes Robert Thomson, Dow Jones’ editor in chief as saying that two editors were assigned to a ‘special project’ in September to focus on “new means of delivering industry-specific information to customers traditionally served by the group’s newswires and data products”.

“It’s obvious to even the casual observer that the part of the business that has slipped a little is B2B. It’s fair to say that that’s the concern which most occupies my thinking at the moment,” he said.

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Nieman Journalism Lab: Are news organisations thinking about linking?

Laura Oliver — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:10:27 +0000

“Links can add a lot of value to stories, but the journalism profession as a whole has been surprisingly slow to take them seriously. That’s my conclusion from several months of talking to organizations and reporters about their linking practices, and from counting the number and type of links from hundreds of stories,” writes Jonathan Stray.

Stray looks at the linking policies and strategies of BBC News, Reuters, Dow Jones, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Associated Press. There’s more to come from this research, but some initial conclusions suggest there’s a way to go when it comes to linking out:

Reading between the lines, it seems that most newsrooms have yet to make a strong commitment to linking. This would explain the mushiness of some of the answers I received, where news organizations “encourage” their reporters or offer “guidance” on linking.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

NYTimes.com: Dow Jones reorganisation

Judith Townend — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:08:01 +0000

News Corp owned Dow Jones & Company is to dismantle the division between The Wall Street Journal and its consumer media group, reports Associated Press, on NYTimes.com.

Dow Jones’s consumer media group, a segment that included The Journal and Barron’s, is being combined with the company’s enterprise media group, which includes the Dow Jones Newswires, the Dow Jones stock indexes and the business research service Factiva.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

#WANIndia2009: Les Hinton tells newspapers – ‘Beware geeks bearing gifts’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:30:27 +0000

Unsurprisingly Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones and part of the Murdoch empire, launched an impassioned attack on free content and Google yesterday as part of his speech to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

Hinton criticised the promise of the internet (‘the false gospel of the web’) and while describing Google as an everyday wonder, said the search engine is at the heart of the crisis faced by newspapers:

“We were promised that eyeballs meant advertising, clicks meant cash. Free costs too much. News is a business and we should not be afraid to say it,” said Hinton.

“These digital visionaries tell people like me that we just don’t understand them. They talk about the wonders of the interconnected world, about the democratization of journalism. The news, they say, is viral now – that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts.Here we are in 2009 – more viral, less profitable.”

Hinton was previously responsible for News International’s newspapers including the Sunday Times, which will introduce charging online next year. He said the industry itself was ‘the principal architect of its greatest difficulty’ for surrendering its content to aggregators and search engines for free – sentiments echoing Murdoch in Beijing only months ago.

Speech reproduced courtesy of WAN and Scribd.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.Similar Posts:

WSJ.com: ITV launching legal proceedings against STV for £38m debt

Judith Townend — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:50:39 +0000

“ITV, a broadcaster, said Tuesday that it will be issuing legal proceedings against STV to recover a gross debt of £38 million; this debt has accumulated as a result of STV not honouring its contractual contributions towards the Network Programme Budget,” reports Dow Jones on the WSJ site.

WSJ story at this link…

ITV statement at this link.

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WSJ confirms paid-for access to news on mobile

Laura Oliver — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:40:00 +0000

News Corp’s Dow Jones has confirmed speculation from earlier this week and announced that the Wall Street Journal will now charge for full access to its content via Blackberry, iPhone and iPod touch devices.

According to a press release, the WSJ applications will remain free to download for each device and continue to offer a mixture of free and subscription content.

The new access model will be introduced from October 24 and hopes to expand the paying audience for Dow Jones’ content by highlighting the specialist, time-sensitive nature of its news.

“Our new mobile subscription model will enable us to continue to invest in the world’s most essential news content and deliver it to our subscribers wherever and whenever they want it,” said Gordon McLeod, president of the Wall Street Journal digital network, in the release.

“This transition also reinforces the value of our content on mobile, just as we’ve done online for more than a decade.”

Full access to the site from these applications will cost $2 per week for a mobile-only subscription. A subscription to mobile and the WSJ in print or online will cost $1 a week.

Print and online subscribers will have free access to content via the smartphone apps.

Full access to the site’s mobile site will only be granted to WSJ.com subscribers, the release added.

Today UK website the Spectator announced it would introduced a range of subscription packages for its website with immediate effect.Similar Posts:

DutchNews.nl: RBI to grow online income by 50 per cent in three years

Laura Oliver — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:13:18 +0000

An internal document from Reed Business Information, publisher of Estates Gazette and New Scientist, says the company wants to grow its revenue from online activities by 50 per cent within three years.

Full DutchNews.nl story at this link…

According to a Dow Jones report on the document, the publisher specifically wants to raise the sale of online publications by 50 per cent in three years.

The division also needs additional cost cutting and an end to duplication of costs, chief executive Keith Jones said in the memo to staff.

Earlier this year RBI’s parent company Reed Elsevier announced the sale of several US magazine titles; in April RBI announced plans for 50 redundancies in the UK – you can see a full timeline of recent events at the company at this link.Similar Posts:

WSJ.com: Joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Channel 4 could be agreed within weeks

Judith Townend — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:08:10 +0000

WSJ.com runs a short interview with BBC Worldwide chief executive John Smith:

“The commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corp., BBC Worldwide, and public service broadcaster Channel 4, could agree a joint venture within weeks, although it would be a scaled down version of the original proposals, BBC Worldwide chief executive John Smith told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.”

MediaGuardian is also running news of the tie-up at this link.Similar Posts:

MorningStar.com: Readers will pay for online within five years, says Axel Springer exec

Laura Oliver — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:22:15 +0000

In an interview with Dow Jones, reproduced by the Morning Star, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Doepfner says customers will be willing to pay for ‘online quality content’ within the next five years.

Significantly, Doepfner adds: “However, our business cases aren’t based on a breakthrough of paid content but will work anyhow.”

The chief exec plans to generate 50 per cent of Axel Springer’s sales from online operations within the next 10 years, according to the report.

Full interview at this link…Similar Posts:

Congrats to Journalism.co.uk contributor Michael Haddon

Laura Oliver — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:35:46 +0000

City University journalism postgrad and Journalism.co.uk contributor Michael Haddon has landed himself a new job as a web copy editor for Dow Jones.

According to Haddon, he first heard about the job via Twitter:

Michael has covered a number of events for us, as well as writing for the Online Journalism Blog, and we’d like to wish him all the best.Similar Posts:

Media Release: Dow Jones grants $515,000 in newspaper fund

Laura Oliver — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:10:01 +0000

Money will support six centres for editing excellence, business reporting training centre and 70 journalism training internships.

Full release at this link…Similar Posts:

Reuters: Print advertising downturn ending, says WSJ’s Thomson

Laura Oliver — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:50:51 +0000

Advertisers are looking to spend in more conservative ways, Robert Thomson told a Reuters conference.

“People are looking for a safe harbour in times of turbulence.”

Print advertising is a shrinking but valuable market, he added.

While digital ads are still growing at Dow Jones, ‘the link between the reader and the ad is more transient online’, he said.Similar Posts:

MediaGuardian: Murdoch says online WSJ and Dow Jones subscriptions could go up

Laura Oliver — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:34:17 +0000

Online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones could go up by $300m every year for up to three years, according to Rupert Murdoch.Similar Posts:

SIIA conference: Copyright needs standard tagging system, says Dow Jones director

Laura Oliver — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:04:21 +0000

Speaking in a session on copyright on the web at yesterday’s SIIA Global Information Industry Summit, Greg Merkle, vice president and creative director of Dow Jones‘ enterprise division, said a standard system for tagging the copyright of material online is needed – in particular, because of the growing use of social media tools to distribute content.

Dow Jones relies on ‘trust’ and ‘emerging standards’ to prevent news and information, which it releases through social media tools such as RSS feeds, from leaving that network, said Merkle.

“There’s no standard for marking up the copyright of information. We are looking at microformats which is a way to say this is copyrighted,” he said.

“We know users collaborate on information, but there are no provisions and no guidelines. We instill trust and we are banking on emerging standards.”

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Reuters: Robert Thomson named managing editor of Wall Street Journal

Laura Oliver — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:40:12 +0000

Former Times editor Robert Thomson has been appointed editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, succeeding Marcus Brauchli.

An op-ed to be published in today’s Journal, will see Thomson admit he made mistakes in his involvement with Brauchli’s departure.Similar Posts: