WBF and WSJ: WTF?

Felix Salmon of Reuters wonders Tuesday why The Wall Street Journal is spending so much time and reporting manpower blogging about the World Business Forum.

Salmon writes, “In any case, this annual boondoggle — an event with zero news value, which large companies give to their middle managers so that they can feel important and have a fun couple of days in New York without really working — has managed, incredibly, to get itself an entire dedicated blog at the WSJ. This is probably a function of the fact that the Journal — along with BusinessWeek, Fox Business, and something called ExecuNet — is a ‘media sponsor’ of the Forum. (Those middle managers are exactly the audience that the WSJ wants to reach.)

“I don’t for a minute blame the business side of the WSJ for sponsoring the WBF — it’s their job to do such deals. But there’s no indication on the WSJ’s WBF blog that it’s anything other than an editorial-side effort, put together by ‘reporters and editors at The Wall Street Journal.’

“Which leaves just two possibilities, neither of which reflect very well on the WSJ. Either the business side bullied the editorial side into putting together this dedicated blog — which would imply that the wall between the two is porous indeed. Or else the editorial side really believes that the World Business Forum is so inherently newsworthy that it should be blogged by multiple staffers over two days. In which case someone at the WSJ really needs their news judgment examined.”

Read more here.