New audiences chief Ebony Reed and chief news strategist Louise Story sent out the following announcement on Monday:
Hi Everyone,
WSJ Money, a free, mobile-first microsite experience that will teach people how to be smarter with their money, launches today. It is part of a strategic effort to reach new audiences with the WSJ’s personal finance reporting.
You can see WSJ Money in the coronavirus resources ribbon at the top of WSJ.com and under the Markets section on the homepage. Its URL is https://www.wsj.com/questions/money.
The New Audiences teams worked in partnership with the Personal Finance team — Julia Carpenter, Sarah Chaney, Orla McCaffrey, Josh Mitchell, Richard Rubin, Laura Saunders, Anne Tergesen, Patrick Thomas and Editor Bourree Lam — to create this project.
Since the pandemic, more than 15,000 readers have submitted questions to us — many with a focus on personal finances and health issues — through our Audience Voice feedback form attached to stories. Some of those reader questions focused on stimulus checks, student loans, mortgages, unemployment and taxes. A sampling of these reader questions were used in this project.
We’ve designed this project with the mobile user in mind. SEO Editor Ed Hyatt provided guidance to make sure users searching for money information will find the project. The mobile design allows users to share the cards in a topic and to share text from each card. Last summer, Ebony interviewed some economic crisis workers to better understand the needs of low income families. Some of that work is baked into this project. You’ll also notice marketing of the project on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The audience and personal finance teams plan to add new features and additional information during quarterly updates. We will also be incorporating updates based on findings from user research studies. Our overall project goal remains expanded audience reach for WSJ and we are exploring future uses for this mobile design.
A special call-out to Andrea Pappas, Kristen Cabrera, Amber Burton for their work conceptualizing and building the page. And the Audience Voice team who fielded these questions: Carrie Reynolds, Anne Michaud, Taylor Nakagawa, Sarah Chacko, Brandon Sanchez, Xavier Cousens. And the product development teams for their support.
More to come as we all work together to meet audience needs.
Best,
Ebony and Louise
