Bad coverage of WSJ and its iPad app

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch spoke earlier this week at the Wall Street Journal‘s “All Things Digital” conference, and he praised the iPad.

Frances Martel of Mediaite covered Murdoch’s comments later on Fox Business Network and wrote, “Murdoch hinted that he would like to see the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal make its way to the iPad.”

Later, she wrote, “What this means for the Wall Street Journal, he later added, was that, yes, it will have an iPad app, and he intends to make customers pay for the services.”

Someone needs to tell Martel and Mediaite that the Journal has had an iPad application since the tablet was launched and already has 10,000 subscribers paying $17.29 a month. It also has thousands of its print and online subscribers accessing the app.

In fact, the Journal’s app has been widely covered by the media. See a review from more than two months ago here.

What Murdoch said about the Journal’s iPad app to Brian Sullivan of Fox Business was this: “One or two magazines out there have beautiful applications and we have to look as good as that.”

And about the Journal iPad app, he later stated, “But we have, what, 10,000 people already just taking The Wall Street Journal, which, after all, is to a fairly, you know, upscale slice of the audience.  But we have another 100,000 people who buy The Journal and have it home delivered, are also using the iPad and getting it there, so that they’ve got something mobile to take with them.”

Note to Mediaite: If you’re going to write about the business news media, at least understand what’s being said.

UPDATE: Mediaite has now updated its story, acknowledging the error. Martel writes, “When this post was written, I mistook Murdoch’s comments that the WSJ’s app has to look ‘as good as’ the competition out there to mean they were still working on it– which they are, but there is an app out there already. The error has been corrected.”