How the WSJ is using a course-style newsletter to provide personal finance

Kayleigh Barber of Digiday writes about how The Wall Street Journal is using the Six-Week Money Challenge to provide personal finance coverage.

Barber writes, “The Wall Street Journal launched its first free, course-style newsletter, the Six-Week Money Challenge, this month, which provides instructional steps each week that readers can follow to increase their knowledge about personal finance.

“The format of the weekly newsletter, according to WSJ personal finance reporter and newsletter author Julia Carpenter, allows even the most novice person to follow along to step by step activities that are meant to teach the basics of finance as well as help readers make changes in their spending and saving habits right away.

“Last month, CNN’s shopping vertical Underscored also launched its first seven-part Sleep But Better newsletter series that offers readers advice for, as the name suggests, sleeping more soundly. Earlier this year, The New York Times’ product recommendation site, Wirecutter, began experimenting with this format through three newsletter courses about credit cards, sleep and working from home. And about five years ago, BuzzFeed pioneered this format, in which it now has 13 active newsletters of this type.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.