How the WSJ decided to launch a newsletter

Leigh Kamping-Carder, head of newsletters at The Wall Street Journal, spoke with Cory Brown of the 99 Newsletter Project about the publication’s newsletter strategy.

Here is an excerpt:

Cory Brown: The Wall Street Journal has a new AI newsletter that launched in September, correct? How is it different from other AI newsletters out there, and how did the idea come about?
Leigh Kamping-Carder: Obviously, AI is a huge topic of conversation and concern. This is true for everyone, but particularly among the Journal’s business-minded readers. We have a lot of AI coverage, not just from our tech bureau, but from careers to personal finance and across the board. So I thought about how we can gather all of that coverage and put it somewhere that people can access it easily.
I did a lot of research looking into other AI newsletters, and there are a ton out there. Most of them are from indie writers, and there are not as many as you would expect from legacy publications.
I found the majority of them were speaking to an audience who was already savvy with AI. They’re already using prompts. They already know how to use all the tools. They’re working in tech, if not working directly in AI.
There wasn’t a lot out there for a savvy audience that wasn’t directly using AI or involved in AI every day. But these people still need to know about how to advance their career, run a business, or to be an executive. That was the tack we took. We have really great coverage and speak to our audience, especially people who need to know about AI but aren’t directly involved in it.
I think a lot of the other AI newsletters out there are also hype newsletters for AI. They’ve fully bought into it. We approached this with a lot of journalistic rigor. The idea is not to be a cheerleader or a doomsayer, but really interrogate things and be smart about it.