Wall Street Journal

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 11:22am on Friday, November 13th, 2009

News Corp.'s COO Says Journal's Pay Wall Strategy Doesn't Make Sense

Business Insider reported on November 12, 2009:

"We asked Chase Carey, News Corp. President and COO, what he thought about Rupert Murdoch's comments earlier this week about pulling the Journal from Google's index. He laughed and said, "I haven't spoken with him since then," but he said, the Journal needs to be consistent in its strategy.

"We don't want people going though a backdoor, or other channels," to access the Journal, says Carey."

The full story:http://www.businessinsider.com/news-corp-coo-the-journals-leaky-wall-strategy-makes-no-sense-2009-11

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:40pm on Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Dow Jones will launch a 'professional edition' of the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper reported on October 21, 2009:

"Dow Jones & Co. on Wednesday announced an online venture that combines The Wall Street Journal's Web site with Dow Jones's business-to-business news service and databases.

The targeted users are businesses and individuals who need more specialized information about energy or corporate bonds, for example, than is available from WSJ.com, but aren't the large companies targeted for costlier services by Dow Jones Newswires or Bloomberg L.P.

The service, called The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition and costing up to $49 a month, has been under discussion for much of the year. Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp., publishes the Journal and owns Dow Jones Newswires and the Factiva news database. The new service is one of the company's first efforts to blend these products, which have largely been aimed at different audiences.

The product is part of a flurry of efforts by news organizations to earn more revenue from their online offerings amid the wide availability of free news on the Internet. Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.com and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper are among the many other enterprises that have sought to offer niche or in-depth information and charge for it.

WSJ Professional allows users to set up the Web site with custom feeds of news, information and alerts for the markets and industry sectors they care most about, as well as to access the regular content on WSJ.com. Dow Jones editors will select news stories and information to help WSJ Professional users dig deeper into topics of interest.

Although Dow Jones plans to charge consumers $49 a month each for WSJ Professional, businesses that buy subscriptions for multiple users will pay less, said Executive Vice President Clare Hart. By contrast, the base price for a subscription to WSJ.com is $149 a year, or a little more than $12 a month, according to Dow Jones's reports with the Audit Bureau of Circulations, though prices vary widely."

The full story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574486791227424728.html

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 1:58pm on Monday, June 15th, 2009

U.S. advertising spending fell 14% in the first quarter of 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported on June 11, 2009:

"U.S. ad spending on media such as TV, print and online display ads fell 14% to $30.18 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to TNS Media Intelligence, despite guardedly optimistic talk in recent weeks about a bottoming out in the market.

The numbers, which exclude categories such as online-search ads and in-store ads, suggest that the ad downturn is far more pronounced than many expected. "We are now in the record books with the worst quarter in a decade," said Jon Swallen, TNS's senior vice president of research.

TNS, an ad-tracking firm owned by WPP PLC, said a recovery in the media business may take time. "So far it looks like second-quarter spending is starting pretty much the same way the first quarter ended. There are hopeful signs of general economic indicators bottoming out, but the advertising sector still appears to be lagging behind," Mr. Swallen said.

The Internet was the only medium to see growth. Online display advertising, which includes banners, was up 8.2%, TNS said. Other researchers have signaled that digital advertising has been less insulated from the recession. Last week, PricewaterhouseCoopers said U.S. online-ad spending fell 5% in the first quarter to $5.5 billion."

The full story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124467774162404243.html

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:00pm on Monday, May 11th, 2009

News Corporation is planning to use "micro payments" at the Wall Street Journal web site, Reuters reported on May 10, 2009:

"News Corp is planning to introduce "micro payments" for individual articles and premium subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal's website, WSJ Managing Editor Robert Thomson said on Sunday.

"It's a payments system -- once we have your details we will be able to charge you according to what you read, in particular, a high price for specialist material," Thomson said in an e-mailed response to Reuters questions."