Assessing Marketwatch's future as a News Corp. subsidiary

Dan Fost of the San Francisco Chronicle looks at business news website Marketwatch as it celebrates its 10th anniversary and is part of the deal where News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is acquiring Dow Jones & Co., its parent.

Fost wrote, “Ali, at PaidContent, says MarketWatch has languished since joining Dow Jones, as top executives like Kramer and President Kathy Yates have left. (Kramer is on PaidContent’s board.) ‘At this point, MarketWatch is in an identity crisis,’ he said. ‘Everything has been in a holding pattern.’

“Things have started picking up in the past six months, he said, and he praised MarketWatch’s video efforts. The company said it has contributed to a 70 percent increase from July to August in video traffic across all Dow Jones Web sites.

“Ali also praised MarketWatch’s ‘community tools’ initiative, an effort to harness its audience in a way that’s become popular on sites using the Web 2.0 rubrics of sharing and social networking. ‘We’re opening up our site to giving our readers a voice,’ general manager Bernard said. The site hopes to aggregate the readers’ comments to see if some deeper, more useful information can be gleaned.

“Such initiatives are typical of MarketWatch’s role in Dow Jones, according to Dow Jones spokeswoman Christine Mohan. ‘Its culture has always been very innovative,’ Mohan said. ‘They’re always trying new things. We think of them as our think tank, almost as a Skunk Works.'”

Read more here.