Fri, 2016-06-17 05:47
Sam Whitmore
WSJ Pro: News, Data and Events
No publisher has more prestige than The Wall Street Journal. But like every publication, it must fight the forces of commoditization that make editorial excellence unprofitable. The WSJ strategy: combine news, data and events into a premium-priced vertical that differentiates from articles-only competitors.
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Doug MacMillan will leave the WSJ this summer to become a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University in New York. "There's no plan to announce yet about who will be taking over my beat, but I know that I am leaving the bureau in very capable hands," Doug says.
Elizabeth Dwoskin this week departed the WSJ to become Silicon Valley correspondent for the Washington Post. She starts March 21. Good luck finding anyone who didn't admire her WSJ work covering big data, and most recently, algorithms.
Change has again come to the Wall Street Journal. Global technology editor Jonathan Krim resigned this week. Former Seattle Times and Businessweek reporter Jay Greene came aboard. Meanwhile, the News Corp. division that operates the WSJ and Dow Jones announced an eight percent year-to-year revenue drop.
To glimpse the future of publishing, don't study publishing. Study LinkedIn, which year after year shows what smart editors can build in a data sandbox. In 2015 LinkedIn committed itself to a series of quarterly lists, showcasing up-and-comers whose thoughts and achievements provably resonate.
With a new web design and new top editors, few publishers changed more than Bloomberg in 2015 -- so it's easy to overlook the new look at Bloomberg LIVE, the company's events group. In February 2016, Bloomberg hopes to attract 200 execs and investors to Cape Town for the launch of the Africa Business and Economic Summit.
Pitching Gadfly, Bloomberg's newly announced business analysis site, is well worth the try -- especially if you shape and pitch contributed content. Nearly all Gadfly essays run between 500 and 700 words, contain at least one chart, offer plenty of outbound links, and make a smart point that thoughtful readers -- even experts in a given field -- might not have considered.
You may remember Ben Worthen from his six years at the Wall Street Journal or seven years at CIO Magazine. Today Ben is well into his second year as EIC of Ready State, a San Francisco-based marketing agency providing strategy, design and content. "Marketing is really good at what you want to say," Ben says. "Journalists are trained to say, 'Does anybody care?'"
Is the tech narrative endangered? Lately we've cased the web for the kinds of stories we used to see everywhere -- the 600-to-800 word news story about a tech company claiming to have built something better, cheaper or faster, or otherwise out to change the world. We found far fewer than we expected, even where they once were abundant.
