A special team led by a high-level manager says Rupert Murdoch’s paper must evolve to survive. But a rivalry between editor and publisher stands in the way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/business/media/wall-street-journal-murdoch.html
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 U.S. 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 Rupert Murdoch’s media empire since 2007. They say The Journal, often Mr. Murdoch’s first read of the day, 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 health care, 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 organizations to charge readers for online access starting in 1996, during the days of dial-up internet. At the time, most other publications, including The New York Times, bought into the mantra that “information wants to be free” and ended up paying dearly for what turned out to be a misguided business strategy.
As thousands of papers across the country folded, The Journal, with its nearly 1,300-person news staff, made money, thanks to its prescient digital strategy. While that inoculated The Journal against the ravages wrought by an array of unlikely newcomers, from Craigslist to Facebook, it also kept the paper from innovating further. The editor leading the news organization as it figures out how to attract new readers without alienating loyal subscribers is Matt Murray, 54, who got the top job in 2018. He has worked at The Journal for two decades, and his promotion was welcomed by many in the newsroom. Soon after, he assembled a strategy team focused on bringing in new digital subscribers. To oversee the group, Mr. Murray hired
Louise Story, a journalist whose career included a decade at The New York Times. She was given a sweeping mandate, marking her as a potential future leader of the paper. She commands a staff of 150 as chief news strategist and chief product and technology officer. Her team helped compile a significant audit of the newsroom’s practices in an effort to boost subscribers and now plays a key role in the newsroom as audience experts, advising other editors on internet-search tactics (getting noticed by Google) and social media to help increase readership.
As the team was completing a report on its findings last summer, Mr. Murray found himself staring down a newsroom revolt. Soon after the killing of George Floyd, staff members created a private Slack channel called “Newsroomies,” where they discussed how The Journal, in their view,
was behind on major stories of the day, including the social justice movement growing in the aftermath of Mr. Floyd’s death. Participants also complained that The Journal’s digital presence was not robust enough, and that its conservative
opinion department had published essays that did not meet standards applied to the reporting staff. The tensions and challenges are similar to what leaders of other news organizations, including The Times, have heard from their staffs. In July, Mr. Murray received a draft from Ms. Story’s team, a 209-page blueprint on how The Journal should remake itself called The Content Review. It noted that “in the past five years, we have had six quarters where we lost more subscribers than we gained,” and said addressing its slow-growing audience called for significant changes in everything from the paper’s social media strategy to the subjects it deemed newsworthy.
The report argued that the paper should attract new readers — specifically, women, people of color and younger professionals — by focusing more on topics such as climate change and income inequality. Among its suggestions: “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 recommendations have not been put into effect, but it is influencing how people work: An impasse over the report has led to a divided newsroom, according to interviews with 25 current and former staff members. The company, they say, has avoided making the proposed changes because a brewing power struggle between Mr. Murray and the new publisher, Almar Latour, has contributed to a stalemate that threatens the future of The Journal. Mr. Murray and Mr. Latour, 50, represent two extremes of the model Murdoch employee. Mr. Murray is the tactful editor; Mr. Latour is the brash entrepreneur. The two rose within the organization at roughly the same time. When the moment came to replace
Gerry Baker as the top editor in 2018, both were seen as contenders.
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