TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson sent the following memo — which signals that Dow Jones plans to compete more aggressively against Reuters, Bloomberg and AP — to all Journal and Dow Jones Newswire reporters on Thursday:
“A breaking corporate, economic or political news story is of crucial value to our Newswires subscribers, who are being relentlessly wooed by less worthy competitors. Even a headstart of a few seconds is priceless for a commodities trader or a bond dealer — that same story can be repurposed for a range of different audiences, but its value diminishes with the passing of time.
“Given that revenue reality, henceforth all Journal reporters will be judged, in significant part, by whether they break news for the Newswires. This is a fundamental shift in orientation which will also require a fundamental change in the inaptly named Speedy system.
“The Speedy was designed with a simple objective: the urgent dissemination of breaking news unearthed by WSJ reporters. Apart from being an important facet of the Newswires service, the system was intended to enhance the newspaper’s reputation as the world’s leading source of financial, business and general news.
“In the age of digitally compressed content, the Speedy should have been a defining advantage for Dow Jones — but, alas, too many of these items were written in a way which neither made sense to Newswires users nor maximized the value of the news they sought to convey.
“The system is in need of revolution, not reform. We must all think of ourselves as Dow Jones journalists and, at the least, have some comprehension of the life-cycle of a news story and its relative worth to our readers around the world. Not all content demands to be free and our content, in particular, has a value that is sometimes better recognised by our readers than our journalists. That we have multiple opportunities to generate income from this content is in stark contrast to many other revenue-challenged news organizations, which have not sold their soul — they have merely given it away.
“With these objectives in mind, we are sending Speedy to the knackery and saddling up a successor, the URGENT. New nomenclature alone will not generate news, so there must also be basic changes of principle and practice at the Journal. A guide to the new system will be published next week and we are aiming to launch on April 15. In coming days, please raise any relevant issues with your bureau chief or editor. There is much angst-ridden, vacuous debate about the fate of American journalism — this is an important practical measure to secure the long-term future of journalists at Dow Jones.”
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Tough stuff. Sounds like he gets the key to the future of news though - "make your news valuable." The WSJ has generally been better at that than most.
:evil:
"less worthy competitors" Yikes, whatta douchebag. He works for Rupert Murdoch and slags off the competition? Steiger might have though this, but would never had *said* it.
In case it isn't obvious what's happening, it's this: News Corp. senses an opportunity to downsize. If you've got more WSJ scribes banging out Newswires stories, you don't necessarily need all those Newswires reporters, do you? I predict you'll see the Dow Jones employee base shrink overall once Dow Jones moves up to News Corp. HQ in midtown NYC
:mrgreen: They are obviously getting the crap kicked out of them and realizing they no longer have anything special so they actually have to work or they will die. Bravo to the competitors
DJ Newswires has got to be under great pressure as their customer base -- financial institutions and legacy media outlets (newspapers) -- is melting like snowballs in July. Reuters and Bloomberg with their wires well financed by their terminal business are stronger competitors.
Act I of this drama was the $2.8 billion writedown in 2008 as the consumer side of DJ (WSJ) deteriorated. Act II will be the deterioration of the enterprise side.
That's an awful lot of arrogance coming from a publication that's becoming less and less relevant by the day. The reason Bloomberg is so successful isn't just its business platform, it's the content. Not only are they faster, but they are faster at getting full stories out with the same content and forward-looking perspective that takes the Journal all day to write.
Has anyone noticed how often Stephen Hayes appears on FOX News these days? He's practically a nightly regular on "Greta" and often makes back-to-back appearances throughout the evening line-up. Clearly, Rupe wants to sqeeze every penny of value out of his well-paid assets on the Journal. Hayes is proving his worth, but his less personable and telegenic (by which I mean a sense of ease on camera, rather than looks, since WSJ's talking heads are generally on the homely side, except for Brett Stephens who is a standout in that crowd) colleagues should probably dust off their resumes.
Salvatore: I think you're right about the downsizing opportunity, but I see this more as a threat to the WSJ reporters, who aren't necessarily wired to break news all the time. Thomson directly goes after the style and voice of the so-called "speedys" from the WSJ. Newswires writes in a more direct style. He's basically giving the WSJ reporters a lot of rope to hang themselves. Those who adapt will stick around; those who don't will cede their beats to their Newswires counterparts, who work for less, by the way.
This means WSJ reporters are now going to be required to get breaking news stories out just like DJ Newswires reporters do. No longer will they be able to sit on stories like they used to. WSJ reporters have excellent contacts and often break news. Now they'll have to do it faster and will need to beat other wires and online competitors. They didn't have to do this before.
About time. They seem finally to realize that news is not perspective. Readers want news. Can the commentary and leave the perspective to The Economist. Maybe I won't have to drop my subscription to WSJ print edition after all.