Wall Street Journal relaunch
This may be the biggest thing with newspapers and the Web yet. Today, January 2, the Wall Street Journal is free, both online and on paper. And you’ll want to check them both out, because they’re no longer identical products.
The Journal’s staff figured out that they could never compete with the real-time aspect of the Internet as far as breaking news in the paper goes, so they decided to stop worrying about it. From now on, all breaking news will be on the Internet only, while the paper edition will be nothing but longer analysis pieces.
This is brilliant. By offering two different products in two different places, Journal readers have a reason to read both products, so the advertisers will want to be in both places. The split products now play to their individual strengths.
More importantly, I think this is a model that can work for every daily. Given the Journal’s visibility, if this takes off, I bet we’ll have a cascade effect and see every major daily doing this within two years.
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The good so far is that the paper is a lot easier to read on the subway. Reading the WSJ was an experience in mastering tight elbows and tri-folds; now it’s fairly hassle free. I don’t think I’ve read the ticker info in years, so not having that bit of bulk made the paper friendlier, too. The only frustrating thing is that, despite these gains, the paper itself is in an editorial /idealogical quagmire. At the same time that their pursuing new business practices, the editorial page has managed to twist itself into near Clintonian levels of truth ducking. Worse yet, the new change has shifted the letters page completely away from the editorial page. The upside is that the most recently printed letters far more strongly trounce the feudal editorial positions the WSJ has taken lately. The downside is, the letters are buried far away from that same editorial page, making them diminish somewhat. I was about to shitcan my wsj subscription–they’ve got me for one more year–but only beyond that if the editors can pull their heads out of their butts on a lot of the 17th century business positions they’ve been taking as of late.
Comment by f. chong rutherford — January 3, 2007 @ 8:42
Very smartly done. Nice to see somebody figuring this out…
J
Comment by John — January 15, 2007 @ 15:15