Reuters, Dow Jones not similar

Louis Hau, the media reporter for Forbes.com, writes Wednesday that despite both Reuters Group and Dow Jones & Co. being best known for their business journalism, the companies — which are both currently acquisition targets — are much different.

Hau wrote, “Reuters is best known as a news agency, but the news operations accounted for only 6.6% of the company’s total revenue in 2006. The vast majority of its business lies instead in selling financial and trading data, along with the terminals that deliver such data.

“Appropriately, that’s where Thomson’s primary interest in Reuters lies. Both sides confirmed Tuesday that they were in talks about a possible merger that they believe would generate cost savings of more than $500 million within three years.

“By contrast, Dow Jones fits the mold of a traditional news media company, having tried and failed to compete in the financial data business in the 1990s through its troubled acquisition of Telerate, which it eventually unloaded in 1998 to Bridge Information Systems. In addition to The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, the company also owns Dow Jones Newswires, WSJ.com and Marketwatch.com.”

Read more here. Does anyone remember Bridge these days?