Categories: OLD Media Moves

The data-driven expansion of WSJ parent Dow Jones

Alex Klein of The Daily Beast writes about how new Dow Jones & Co. CEO Lex Fenwick, previously at Bloomberg, is expanding the Wall Street Journal parent’s data offerings.

Klein writes, “He has started a new division, Data Strategy, which according to a Dow Jones internal memo will funnel data to business and institutional customers. According to one executive, Fenwick has even started ‘tearing the doors off offices,’ creating the kind of open workspace environment Bloomberg is known for.

“Ashley Huston, Dow Jones’s vice president for communications, declined to comment on the Dow Jones leadership transition or News Corp.’s strategy.

“Murdoch is widely known to have newspapers in his DNA, and analysts have speculated he was forced to split the company by anxious investors. But if the publishing division has any hope for survival on its own, Murdoch might be forced to take the bitter pill of reinventing that side of the business to compete better with his data-focused competitors. In 2011, Bloomberg controlled roughly 30 percent of the $16 billion financial-data market, according to Burton-Taylor. Thomson Reuters took a close second, at 30.05 percent, and Dow Jones, a distant third, with 1.6 percent.”

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.