A newspaper’s strategies to stay profitable
(NYTIMES) - The Wall Street Journal is a rarity in 21st-century media: a newspaper that makes money. A lot of money. But at a time when the United States population is growing more racially diverse, older white men still make up the largest chunk of its readership, with retirees a close second. "The No. 1 reason we lose subscribers is they die," goes a joke shared by some Journal editors. Now a special innovation team and a group of nearly 300 newsroom employees are pushing for drastic changes at the paper, which has been part of Mr Rupert Murdoch's media empire since 2007. They say The Journal must move away from subjects of interest to established business leaders and widen its scope if it wants to succeed in the years to come. The Journal of the future, they say, must pay more attention to social media trends and cover racial disparities in healthcare, for example, as aggressively as it pursues corporate mergers. That argument has yet to convince executives in the top ranks of the company. The Journal got digital publishing right before anyone else. It was one of the few news organisations to charge readers for online access starting in 1996, during the days of dial-up Internet....
