Biz media will face same issues as consumer media

Joseph Weisenthal of PaidContent.org writes Thursday that former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz believes that the business media will soon face the same issues plaguing consumer media.

Crovitz was speaking at the Software and Information Industry Association Summit in New York.

Weisenthal wrote, “Crovitz contends that it’s only a matter of time before the disruptive forces affecting consumer media will affect the business side. Eventually, he argued, consumers of business news and information will demand the same ease of use and availability that they get from consumer media. As a canary-in-the-coal-mine example, he cited Yahoo Finance, which is used by a lot of business professionals, despite the fact that they all have access to more professional tools at work.

“Hybrid model: Although Crovitz does not have to face shareholders anymore, he’s still an ardent defender of the WSJ’s hybrid model. ‘I think the hybrid model works very well… it is unfortunate that other have abandoned the paid model… Deeply engaged users are highly valued by advertisers.’ He noted that there are now as many paying subscribers to the online edition of the WSJ as there are paying readers of the print NYT: ‘Brands and content that people pay for will have a better chance of thriving than brands that people do not value enough to pay for.’ He denied that the hybrid model is confusing to users, suggesting its more confusing to analysts that don’t have access to all of the internal data.”

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