Wall Street Journal examines foreign language web editions

Richard Wray of the Guardian newspaper in London writes Thursday that The Wall Street Journal is exploring offering its website in a variety of foreign languages in a bid to increase overseas readers.

Wray, after an interview with WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz, wrote, “But Mr Crovitz said there would be no retrenchment. Instead the battle for readers outside the US will increasingly take place online. ‘One question we are considering this year is, is there an opportunity in local markets in Europe and Asia to create locally oriented versions of the online journal,’ he told the Guardian. ‘I’m not saying that we wouldn’t publish in the print medium but, from a business point of view, the costs of starting something online are infinitesimal. New technology allows risk-taking and experimentation.’

“It also plays to the strengths of the Dow Jones empire, he believes. The newswire already has journalists supplying news in 11 languages, from French and Russian to Arabic and Japanese, and it would not need much investment to adapt news for the internet. It already has a non-English version of its website: WSJ.com launched a Chinese language site in 2002 that now has more than 273,000 registered users and clocks up almost 3 million page views a month.

“But unlike many news organisations who find that the transition from print to digital consists largely of turning newspaper reporters into digital journalists, the Journal’s next phase of online growth is part of a major re-focusing of the newspaper itself. This month the Wall Street Journal revamped its US edition. It reduced the physical size of the paper and instituted an 80/20 rule. In essence, according to Mr Crovitz, 80% of the newspaper should be new, in-depth or exclusive reporting. ‘People want to know what the news means beyond what happened the day before,’ he said.”

Read more here, including Crovitz expressing an interest in buying The Financial Times, should it ever be for sale.