Figures released by the Dow Jones Company today show that Wall Street Journal Online has 731,000 subscribers – 5.2% above the same quarter last year. The Journal’s online edition has a paid list larger than paid print circulation at all but six newspapers in the US. This is an online model working well.
Wall Street Journal online is a newspaper model without a supply chain. It’s efficient for the publisher and efficient for the advertiser.
In an interview discussion with Jay Rosen of NYU and published on the brillian PressThink site, Bill Grueskin, Managing Editor of Wall Street Journal Online said:
print and online would work like a family, with gently aging parents and striving college-age kids. Mom and Dad would support the kids for a while, then the kids would get jobs and chip in a few bucks every year, and finally, as the parents got older and earned less, their kids would contribute more from their quickly expanding incomes. And over time, the family would stay happy.
He said considerably more than this and the interview makes for fascinating reading. Here is one particularly fascinating exchange about craigslist:
Jay Rosen: Final question. Here’s what Tim Porter reported from yesterday’s American Society of Newspaper Editors convention. The scene was a panel on the future of newspapers:
One of the most telling moments of the hour occurred just as the meeting opened when Nachison and Peskin put a slide up of Craig Newmark and asked how many people in the room of several hundred recognized him or his name. Only a smattering of hands rose. A few more hands went up at the mention of Craigslist and its free classifieds.
What does that tell you?
Bill Grueskin: It tells me those editors need better optometrists. Or it restates the warning from your car’s side view mirror: Objects may be closer than they appear.
The message for retailers who rely on news and information product to generate important traffic to their stores, the message is get informed, get engaged and take control of your future. The big end of town is now onto what’s happening. I wonder when small business, particularly Australian Newsagents, will catch on.