Why the WSJ won't fall apart

Hamilton Nolan of Gawker writes Wednesday that he believes that despite the departures from The Wall Street Journal, the paper is still in a strong position against its competitors.

Nolan writes, “The paper is the only one in America actually investing in financial news; elsewhere, it’s simply a shrinking field. The big three financial magazines are all in more or less perilous positions. The Economist‘s upper ranks are a good gig, but only for a chosen few. Of the prospective upstarts in the field, Portfolio has thus far proven itself to be only a black hole for Conde Nast’s money, and Slate‘s proposed new business title will employ only a relative handful of journalists (and is no sure success itself). FiLife.com, IAC’s new money matters site, has morphed into a user-friendly community site based on personal finance that no skilled business journalist would have any use for.

“Newspapers? Even worse. The Times can’t afford to pick up all the business reporters qualified to work there. Nor can the FT, even if it wanted to. Reuters and Bloomberg are viable employers (for now), but neither offers the type of prestige the WSJ does for an ambitious reporter.

“The point: The number of decent US jobs in business journalism is shrinking. Those who leave the WSJ face the very real prospect of not finding anything nearly as good as the position they left. And the problem will only get worse for the foreseeable future. So those who bailed out for PR and Wall Street will end up with a lot of old WSJ colleagues sending resumes their way.”

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