How the WSJ is building an incubator in the newsroom

Christine Schmidt of Nieman Lab writes about how The Wall Street Journal is building an incubator for new products within its newsroom.

Schmidt writes, “Nearly all news organizations are recognizing the need to expand their offerings and become more relatable to more people — so more people, um, are more likely to give them more money if they ask for it. The Journal’s rising departments are a strong signal of exactly where and how the 130-year-old news outlet is seeing the next lifetime. It involves journalism as a public good, a refrain commonly recited in nonprofit news circles like at the American Journalism Project but a little surprising at a financial news-focused broadsheet.

“Story described one effort as such: ‘The new audiences group is going to focus on an initiative around professional women [and] financial literacy which is providing information about money to be helpful to people, even people who may or may not subscribe but really providing information as a public good.’

“The organization is trying to reconfigure its systems by building this hub of innovation infused in the newsroom. Here are the departments, with some elaborations drawn from the March memo.”

Read more here.