MarketWatch launches The Big Deal newsletter on AT&T/Time Warner

MarketWatch.com has started a daily email newsletter called The Big Deal focused on news and analysis about AT&T’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner.

The newsletter will be written by media reporter Trey Williams.

MarketWatch editor in chief Jeremy Olshan explained its origination in an email to Talking Biz News:

Most email newsletters are treated as a lifetime commitment, a marriage of sorts that you’re stuck with until you go through the hassle of getting a divorce. But what if the emails could be more of a spring fling, a relationship that expires on its own as interest wanes? We had been thinking about experimenting along these lines when the AT&T deal broke.

Duncan Mavin, head of editorial projects for Dow Jones Media Group, had a cool idea for a pop-up site for those interested in following the story. But as we hashed it out with our media reporter, Trey Williams, we decided this was the perfect opportunity for a shorter-run email newsletter instead. And we managed to get it up in one day. The frequency will be daily as long as there is still a lot to say.

So far the response has been solid. Hundreds signed up in the first couple of days and the newsletter has been popular as a story on the site as well.  It’s too soon to draw any conclusions from this experiment, but we certainly plan to try this again.