Dow Jones CEO talks Wall Street Journal

The financial and economic meltdown helped the Wall Street Journal become the nation’s largest weekday paper, Les Hinton, chief executive of Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., said in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Kathleen Pender of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, “With moderator Quentin Hardy of Forbes, Hinton discussed the Journal’s tablet app, social media, the future of print, the national debt and his boss. Here are some of his comments:

“On the iPad app: The Journal launched its tablet application the same day Apple’s iPad debuted. Based on a year of experience, the Journal has found that tablet users buy fewer print newspapers, magazines and books but spend more time consuming the contents of newspapers, magazines and books. They are also more satisfied with content delivered on tablets than on smart phones.

“On the future of newspapers: ‘I hope and believe that the word newspaper will endure’ no matter how its content is delivered, Hinton said. He pointed out that the term ‘cc’ survived the death of carbon copies and people still ‘cut and paste’ on computers without scissors or glue.

“But he also said paper editions ‘will endure for a long time.’ After all, a newspaper doesn’t break when you drop it and never has to be rebooted, he noted.

“When I asked Hinton after his speech when he thought the Journal would print its last dead-tree edition, Hinton refused to speculate beyond ‘a distant future decade.'”