Interim Dow Jones CEO: We will invest in journalism

William Lewis, the interim chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, sent out the following message to the staff on Monday:

It has been two weeks since I was appointed Interim CEO, and I wanted to write to thank the many people across the company who have been kind enough to send me their thoughts and ideas on how we can ensure our business is able to respond better to our customers’ needs.

People from many departments and many regions across the globe have given me detailed thoughts and considered opinions on how we can be the best.  I have also been able to meet many people in person at our offices at Avenue of the Americas and South Brunswick as well as Gray’s Inn Road and Fleet Place in London, I look forward to meeting many more of you over the coming weeks.  This is an outstanding company, full of passionate people and we have the most tremendous opportunity ahead of us.

I’ve been learning in great detail about our products, our people and the possibilities that we have at Dow Jones. Working with the senior management team, my aim is to take a thoughtful and considered approach to understand the landscape and to help create a culture of listening and open communication in which your views are heard. Please email me at william.lewis@dowjones.com with any thoughts you have that you would like to share with me.

The medium-term goal is to work towards a budget process for FY15 that Anna Sedgley and her team will lead for me. This will help shape our focus and strategy, which we will begin to implement at the start of the fiscal year in July.  This strategy will, to a large extent, be based on input from co-workers who have deep and detailed knowledge about their markets, their products and our customers and we do want to hear from all of you – so please take the opportunity to contribute to the discussion over the next few months.

The other clear priority is to review our institutional strategy.  As you may be aware we have created a DJX task force with cross-company representation in order to carve out next steps. This team has been working hard with input from many people.  We look forward to sharing the outcome with you shortly and to working more closely with our institutional customers.

We will also be increasing our efforts to expand our consumer business and invest in our digital products.  Our journalism serves the most influential individuals around the world and it sets the standard for rigorous, quality reporting.  Investing in our journalism and building our consumer brands is an unequivocal priority.

We have world-class people and products at Dow Jones and I am truly excited about the opportunities and possibilities for growth and expansion.

Thank you for making me so welcome in my first few weeks and thank you for your commitment to our company. I look forward to working with you.