WSJ is launching a products and services initiative in ’22

Dow Jones & Co. CEO and Wall Street Journa publisher Almar Latour sent out the following on Thursday:

Colleagues,

I’m excited to share that we will launch a WSJ commerce initiative aimed at providing our users with trustworthy advice when they’re buying products and services.

With informed reviews and well researched recommendations, we will help our audience make decisions on the purchases they are researching and offer shoppers a unique and unbiased perspective from a new, yet familiar voice, amid a seemingly endless—and at times confusing—offering of outlets.

The project will mark the latest in a slew of Dow Jones and WSJ investments that support our mission to provide the world’s most trusted source of journalism, data and analysis to help people make decisions.

The commerce initiative will report into Josh Stinchcomb, chief revenue officer for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, I’m pleased to announce several key leadership appointments that will accelerate our progress to launch.

Leslie Yazel is the initiative’s new editor and head of content. Leslie joins from The Wall Street Journal newsroom, where she has held a range of roles across newsroom editorial strategy and search engine optimization. Additionally, Emily Welsh will be expanding her role to include marketing strategy for the WSJ commerce initiative, in addition to her existing responsibilities for trade marketing.

Leslie and Emily will be joined by Adam Burakowski, the new head of commercial for the WSJ commerce initiative. Adam joins us from Insider Inc.’s Reviews and before that led the deals team at Wirecutter for four years. Leslie and Adam will report to Josh. Emily will continue to report to Katy Lawrence.

The WSJ commerce initiative will have its own content team and set of standards that will be separate from our current newsrooms, while rooted in our values and code of conduct. Leslie will be closely working with Matt Murray, Daniel Bernard, Aaron Kissel and Emma Moody to ensure the new site lives up to the reputation of The Wall Street Journal while differentiating its work from the newsroom.

We will be building out an expanded team and are seeking candidates for a number of new roles. This initiative will require entrepreneurial product thinkers, engineers, writers and analysts. We invite candidates who are interested in learning more about the open positions to view them here.

There will be more to share as efforts get underway. Stay tuned for the launch of the new site next year.

Almar