Inside the battle for the way forward for the Wall Street Journal

Written by Edmund Lee
The Wall Street Journal is a rarity in Twenty first-century media: a newspaper that makes cash. Some huge cash. But at a time when the U.S. inhabitants is rising extra racially various, older white males nonetheless make up the biggest chunk of its readership, with retirees an in depth second.
“The No. 1 reason we lose subscribers is they die,” goes a joke shared by some Journal editors.
Now a particular innovation staff and a gaggle of almost 300 newsroom workers are pushing for drastic adjustments on the paper, which has been a part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire since 2007. They say The Journal, usually Murdoch’s first learn of the day, should transfer away from topics of curiosity to established enterprise leaders and widen its scope if it desires to reach the years to come back. The Journal of the longer term, they are saying, should pay extra consideration to social media traits and canopy racial disparities in well being care, for instance, as aggressively because it pursues company mergers.
That argument has but to persuade executives within the prime ranks of the corporate.
The Journal bought digital publishing proper earlier than anybody else. It was one of many few information organizations to cost readers for on-line entry beginning in 1996, in the course of the days of dial-up web. At the time, most different publications, together with The New York Times, purchased into the mantra that “information wants to be free” and ended up paying dearly for what turned out to be a misguided enterprise technique.
As hundreds of papers throughout the nation folded, The Journal, with its almost 1,300-person information workers, made cash, due to its prescient digital technique. While that inoculated The Journal in opposition to the ravages wrought by an array of unlikely newcomers, from Craigslist to Facebook, it additionally saved the paper from innovating additional.
The editor main the information group because it figures out learn how to entice new readers with out alienating loyal subscribers is Matt Murray, 54, who bought the highest job in 2018. He has labored at The Journal for twenty years, and his promotion was welcomed by many within the newsroom. Soon after, he assembled a method staff targeted on bringing in new digital subscribers. To oversee the group, Murray employed Louise Story, a journalist whose profession included a decade at The New York Times.
The New York headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in midtown Manhattan on April 7, 2021. News Corp recorded a .1 billion loss final 12 months. (Sasha Maslov/The New York Times)
She was given a sweeping mandate, marking her as a possible future chief of the paper. She instructions a workers of 150 as chief information strategist and chief product and know-how officer. Her staff helped compile a big audit of the newsroom’s practices in an effort to spice up subscribers and now performs a key position within the newsroom as viewers specialists, advising different editors on internet-search ways (getting observed by Google) and social media to assist improve readership.

As the staff was finishing a report on its findings final summer season, Murray discovered himself staring down a newsroom revolt. Soon after the killing of George Floyd, workers members created a personal Slack channel known as “Newsroomies,” the place they mentioned how The Journal, of their view, was behind on main tales of the day, together with the social justice motion rising within the aftermath of Floyd’s loss of life. Participants additionally complained that The Journal’s digital presence was not strong sufficient and that its conservative opinion division had printed essays that didn’t meet requirements utilized to the reporting workers. The tensions and challenges are much like what leaders of different information organizations, together with The Times, have heard from their staffs.
In July, Murray obtained a draft from Story’s staff, a 209-page blueprint on how The Journal ought to remake itself known as The Content Review. It famous that “in the past five years, we have had six quarters where we lost more subscribers than we gained” and stated addressing its slow-growing viewers known as for vital adjustments in all the things from the paper’s social media technique to the topics it deemed newsworthy.
The report argued that the paper ought to entice new readers — particularly, ladies, individuals of colour and youthful professionals — by focusing extra on matters corresponding to local weather change and earnings inequality. Among its strategies: “We also strongly recommend putting muscle behind efforts to feature more women and people of color in all of our stories.”
The Content Review has not been formally shared with the newsroom and its suggestions haven’t been enforce, however it’s influencing how individuals work: An deadlock over the report has led to a divided newsroom, in response to interviews with 25 present and former workers members. The firm, they are saying, has prevented making the proposed adjustments as a result of a brewing energy battle between Murray and the brand new writer, Almar Latour, has contributed to a stalemate that threatens the way forward for The Journal.
A replica of The Wall Street Journal is displayed on a newsstand in New York on April 7, 2021. (Sasha Maslov/The New York Times)
Murray and Latour, 50, symbolize two extremes of the mannequin Murdoch worker. Murray is the tactful editor; Latour is the brash entrepreneur. The two rose inside the group at roughly the identical time. When the second got here to interchange Gerry Baker as the highest editor in 2018, each have been seen as contenders.
The two males have by no means gotten alongside, in response to individuals with data of the matter. Or as an government who is aware of each effectively put it, “They hate each other.” The digital technique report has solely heightened the pressure of their relationship — and, with it, the course of the crown jewel within the Murdoch information empire.
Both Murray and Latour declined to be interviewed for this text.
About a month after the report was submitted, Story’s technique staff was involved that its work would possibly by no means see the sunshine of day, three individuals with data of the matter stated, and a draft was leaked to certainly one of The Journal’s personal media reporters, Jeffrey Trachtenberg. He filed an in depth article on it late final summer season.
But the primary glimpse that exterior readers, and many of the workers, bought of the doc wasn’t in The Journal. In October, a pared-down model of The Content Review was leaked to BuzzFeed News, which included a hyperlink to the doc as a sideways scan. (Staffers, desperate to learn the report, needed to flip their heads 90 levels.)
The leak angered Murray, individuals with data of the matter stated. But he supplied an olive department on the identical time. “I’m very proud of the work being done by the strategy team across the newsroom,” he stated, in response to a recording of a gathering obtained by The Times. He added that the report’s suggestions — “some of which I disagree with” — required debate.
If subsequent debate has led to revisions or an up to date technique, the workers hasn’t been instructed. The Journal’s personal story by Trachtenberg on The Content Review nonetheless has not run.
‘A broad cultural fear of change’
The Journal isn’t the one media group whose leaders have been challenged by its workers. Editors at The Times, the Los Angeles Times and Condé Nast have confronted robust questions from staffers on how they’ve dealt with race protection or problems with bias or problematic editorials.
What’s uncommon in regards to the current occasions at The Journal is the general public nature of the grievances. The Times, against this, is thought for a way its inner spats turn into public. At The Journal, office gripes have a tendency to remain inside the household. Mostly. (None of the individuals interviewed for this text work at The Times, which has recruited a large variety of Journal workers.)
The Content Review didn’t pull any punches. “We have a broad cultural fear of change and we overweight the possibility of alienating some readers, compared to our opportunity cost of not changing and growing,” it learn.
News Corp., the dad or mum firm of Dow Jones, the writer of The Journal, has put strain on the paper to double the variety of subscribers. But to satisfy that objective, it should “reach a sustained 100 million monthly unique visitors” by June 2024, in response to the report, noting that its web site has by no means attracted greater than 50 million readers in a given month.
Dow Jones disputed that determine, saying that the positioning averaged about 55 million, with a peak of 79 million final March. (The Journal briefly gave readers free entry to its protection of the coronavirus pandemic when it hit the United States greater than a 12 months in the past.)
Earnings filings present The Journal had 2.46 million digital-only subscribers on the finish of 2020, together with 106,000 who got here aboard within the 12 months’s last quarter.
Early final 12 months, as Story’s staff was months away from making its suggestions, Murray was sanguine that its eventual report can be effectively obtained by Will Lewis, who was then the Dow Jones chief government and The Journal’s writer, in response to a number of individuals who labored within the newsroom. But final spring Lewis all of a sudden stepped down. He was changed in each jobs by Latour, who had received reward inside the firm for his digital know-how because the writer of Dow Jones’ Barron’s Group.
Murray was not joyful to be taught of Latour’s appointment, in response to 5 individuals with data of the matter. That’s when his angle towards the technique staff’s efforts modified, the individuals stated.
They added that Murray was involved that the group’s report, coupled with the workers unrest, can be taken as an indictment of his management, and that Latour would possibly use its findings in opposition to him. The doc known as out Murray in a single occasion through which it noticed that the visitors objectives have “not been articulated well enough in the newsroom” and added, “Unless Matt is abandoning that goal, it needs to be announced and explained robustly.”
Dow Jones disputed that characterization of Murray’s concern and stated that he and Latour had gotten alongside and mentioned the staff’s work.
Latour had his personal thought of learn how to goose The Journal’s readership, one constructed on extra frequent visitors ways that he had employed on the sister titles Barron’s and MarketWatch. A couple of individuals on the enterprise facet and a few prime editors who had seen the evaluation by Story’s staff dismissed it as a “woke” technique, given its emphasis on interesting to underrepresented readers, the individuals stated.
In an announcement, Story stated she was happy with her staff’s work and their collaborative efforts throughout the newsroom, which “has led to great results.”
Leadership tensions stymie progress
News Corp. appears to be like like most growing older media companies: It’s shrinking. It recorded a $1.1 billion loss final 12 months, and information revenues, apart from Dow Jones, proceed to fall. Dow Jones operates The Journal and several other different titles corresponding to Barron’s and MarketWatch, however not News Corp.’s Australian and British newspapers, which haven’t carried out as effectively. (The firm additionally owns an actual property listings enterprise, TV stations in Australia and e book writer HarperCollins.) News Corp. lately employed the consulting agency Deloitte to work on a challenge to consolidate its many divisions, in response to three individuals with direct data of the matter. That would imply price cuts and will result in the lack of a big variety of jobs, the individuals stated.
The Journal’s formidable subscriber goal may be very a lot a part of News Corp.’s mission to stem the bleeding and discover new areas of development. But its editor and writer, reverse in some ways, seem to have arrived at almost reverse conclusions about one of the simplest ways ahead.
Latour, who grew up within the small village of Welten, Holland, was identified to have clocked extra Page 1 tales than nearly anybody else on the paper when he coated the European telecommunications business. A graduate of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, he began his journalism profession as an intern at The Washington Times and exhibited the form of scrappy drive prized by Murdoch.
Murray, who grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, is laid-back, amiable and generally awkward, colleagues stated. He obtained his undergraduate and graduate levels from Northwestern, is fascinated by the leisure business and is a Talking Heads fan.
What is The Wall Street Journal?
One of the important thing points outlined in The Content Review was the necessity to retain youthful readers. For years, The Journal attracted faculty college students by providing them a lowered value; however as soon as these provides expired, they give up the publication at a better price — over 70% — than another group, the report stated.
To assist resolve that situation, Story’s staff launched Noted, a month-to-month digital journal designed to enchantment to readers beneath 35.
Noted was additionally partly the brainchild of Grace Murdoch, certainly one of Rupert Murdoch’s daughters, who had interned with Story’s staff in summer season 2019 whereas in highschool, in response to two individuals accustomed to the matter.
“We need to move beyond perceptions and embrace actual data about younger audiences, and that is what WSJ Noted will be providing,” the report learn. This included “tailoring content” for youthful readers; final 12 months, 10 reporters, editors and designers have been employed to start out engaged on options about inequality in schooling, pupil debt and associated matters.
The challenge bumped into hassle as soon as Murray noticed the copy, in response to 4 individuals with data of the matter. He line-edited tales himself, uncommon for a prime Journal editor. An article a couple of faculty campus motion to abolish sororities and fraternities in an effort to fight racism and homophobia was spiked, in response to the individuals. Murray objected to phrases corresponding to “trans-phobia,” which was not within the paper’s type information, referring to them as “jargon-y woke-isms,” they stated. Dow Jones stated that Murray and Story determined to not publish that article as a result of different shops had coated the subject.
Noted switched gears. Based partly on a suggestion from Latour, it targeted solely on sensible items, corresponding to “how to update your résumé” or “how to approach a job interview.” Two Noted editors left within the final week of March, and now there are solely 4 individuals on its workers.

One objective put forth by The Content Review appeared extra attainable to many contained in the paper than conjuring hundreds of thousands of latest subscribers in a single day: a better effort to enchantment to readers of colour. In a gathering between the technique staff and high-level editors, Story spoke about attempting to trace the racial range of individuals quoted in Journal protection. Most of these gathered for the dialogue have been white.
In a Feb. 22 memo to the workers, Murray endorsed together with a greater variety of individuals in The Journal’s protection, pledging to “properly capture the diversity of our society and speak to as wide an audience as possible.”
Latour has additionally been speaking in regards to the want for change. In a collection of companywide conferences that began final summer season, he emphasised the significance of The Journal’s digital transformation, however repeated a phrase that many took to imply he wished a continued give attention to enterprise leaders and Wall Street elites. “We need to be digging into the brand,” he stated, in response to a number of workers members.
Latour by no means requested for a duplicate of The Content Review, in response to two individuals accustomed to the matter. It’s nonetheless unclear if he’s learn it.
If he has, he would know that one key message contradicts the very strategy he’s favoring: “We can’t think we’ve got a comfy base of digital subscribers who will be satisfied if we just keep doing what we’re doing.”