WSJ deputy bureau chief applauds cutting stock listings

David Wessel, the Washington deputy bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, applauded the moves by newspapers across the country to cut their published stock listings and encourage readers to get that information online in a speech at Yale University.

Wessel, who writes a weekly Capitol column in the print edition of the paper, answers questions from readers in the Journal’s online edition, and appears regularly as a commentator on both TV (CNBC) and radio (NPR), also said in his speech that he believed that newspapers will exist in some form in the future.

The New Haven Independent’s Paul Bass wrote, “He noted that while the Journal has had to offer subscriber discounts to keep its print circulation at 1.75 million, its paid circulation jumped 8 percent last year alone, to 750,000 paid subscribers. However, advertisers have leapfrogged over the Journal’s website to lower-cost sites that reach their desired audience just fine.

“Ultimately, the Internet threat doesn’t scare him, Wessel said. A new business model will emerge that enables legitimate big news operations like the Journal to make money online. He didn’t guess what that model will be. (Some guesses from this corner: not-for-profit sites on the ‘All Things Considered’ model; an ever-changing sea of profitable small sites either selling advertising as a large group and/or relying on subscriptions; for-profit ‘editor’ sites that weed intelligently through thousands of newspaper websites, blogs, and government and corporate web sites to tailor RSS-style individualized news pages to customers.)”

Read more about Wessel’s comments here.