WSJ to launch paid news app

The Wall Street Journal plans to roll out its first mobile-only product —a paid, digest-style news app that’s said to be an ambitious project for the paper as it consolidates resources around digital and reconfigures its newsroom through staff buyouts.

Joe Pompeo of Capital New York writes, “The app will be called What’s News, named for the signature news briefs column that has long anchored the Journal‘s front page. It will be produced by a team of journalists and offered as an add-on for subscribers, according to sources with first-hand knowledge of the plans.

“From a business standpoint, the app is designed to shore up subscriber loyalty as the Journal marches toward a goal of 3 million paying customers by 2017; it currently has around 2.2 million, roughly 700,000 of which are digital-only subscribers, according to company estimates.

“Sources who have seen a prototype of What’s News described the app, which will enter beta testing next month ahead of a rollout on Apple’s iOS operating system, as a scan of the day’s most important news stories broken down for readers on the go. They also said it’s being talked up internally as a key component of the Journal’s digital strategy.”

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