Goodbye WSJ, I Hardly Knew Ye - Jim Louderback - MediaBizBloggers - Jim Louderback - MediaBizBloggers.com

Published: September 1, 2009 at 02:41 AM GMT
Last Updated: August 31, 2009 at 02:41 AM GMT

When I lived in Manhattan in the late eighties, there were really only two main papers. The suits read the Journal, and the intelligentsia read the New York Times. The Post and the Daily News? Comic relief.

NYU's MBA program drew me to the city, but I was definitely a New York Times reader. Growing up in the Jersey suburbs, I'd been reading it since I was 10, so that definitely influenced my choice.

I was still a 'Times fan when I moved to the beach south of San Francisco. I called my new town barbaric, because I couldn't get the NYT delivered to my home. Two years later, home delivery arrived. Another two years later and I cancelled my subscription for good – a combination of Jayson Blair and the internet made the paper version redundant.

But last year, much to my surprise, I found myself seriously considering subscribing to the Wall Street Journal. As a relatively new CEO, I suddenly spotted it everywhere: in my VC's lobby, tucked into my board members' briefcases, and read religiously by my new head of finance. But the kicker, the thing that pushed me over the edge, was a special one-year delivery deal for $99 that showed up last summer.

The Journal had changed – I convinced myself – with a new weekend paper, the Personal Journal, and even sports coverage. Maybe it was time to give it a shot. So I pulled out a Franklin, shipped it off to New York and eagerly awaited my first issue. At first I was intrigued. Street chatter, CEO profiles, and even a book review in every paper. The features seemed well written, I reignited my infatuation with the wine snobs, and started lusting after zillion dollar estates in the classifieds. Maybe, just maybe, I'd become a suit.

In addition to the paper, I also got behind-the-paywall access to WSJ.com. And just as I started reading the paper every day, I forced myself to visit the online version, just to see what all the hubbub was about.

For the first few months, life was good. I considered that money well spent. But by January, I was starting to have second thoughts. First, I stopped visiting WSJ.com regularly. Those industry specific sites already aggregated inside my newsreader, including Paid Content, the GigaOm network and Cynopsis, gave me all the news analysis I needed. My perennial home page – a customized My Yahoo left over from the first boom – kept me up to date on broad news and stocks. And after following a few key twitter users, I even started discovering breaking news before the WSJ.

The paper started piling up as well. Again, my online sources, including Mark Anderson, Fred Wilson and Mark Cuban consistently delivered more reliable analysis than what appeared regularly in the paper. And the journal's own skunkworks – Mossberg and Swisher's All Things Digital site – seemed to take care of just about everything else I needed.

Even the "feature" sections started growing old. The sports stories were few and rarely relevant. The meandering, badly edited essays that regularly lead the "Personal Journal" section each day were impossible to get through. And Dorothy and John Gaiter took a month off – after writing the same damn "Open the Bottle" night column for the tenth year in a row.

And despite the timeliness promise, I was apparently still living in a backwater. When I signed my subscription, the Journal promised timely delivery every morning. But not everywhere. My daily paper showed up late in the afternoon, in the mail. Except on Tuesdays, when I'd get a bonus – Monday's issue too. 12 hours late is an eternity – but 36 hours late is fish wrap.

But the kicker – and the final nail in the coffin – was when I received a notice to renew my subscription. The price had jumped 150% - from $100 for a year to $250. And that's when I realized I hadn't really become a suit at all. I'd rather have that $250 in my pocket than continue to subscribe to yesterday's news late this afternoon – if at all.

So I ripped the letter into pieces, kissed the Journal goodnight, and went back to my online news sources. My online FREE news sources. The bloggers I follow are more insightful than the journal columnists. The news sources I read are timelier and more focused on my industry. And the real-time web – via Twitter, Facebook and the like offer better and more timely breaking news.

It turns out I'm not a Journal suit at all. But I'm not an NYT elite either. I'm an internet omnivore – and a cheap one at that. And there are a hell of a lot of others just like me. And that, more than anything else, is why the pay walls will fail. Better free beats late on paper – or online – every time.

Jim Louderback joined Revision3 as the CEO in July 2007. He can be reached at jim@revision3.com

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Ah Jim, I bemoan the loss of a good daily paper ... though I subscribe to the NYT there's some jerk in my building who steals it almost every day (so much for folks not reading, eh).

As far as the WSJ goes though, the minute Rupert bought it, I ditched my subscription. I'd argue that were their business and editorial acumen what it was before the Satan from Down Under purchased it, the Journal would still be giving you the joy it once did - no matter how short lived that might have been.

Posted at 07:43 AM on Sep 1, 2009 by Cathy Brooks

Hey Jim,

Good post, thanks.

Your post brings up the crux of the issue (your problems with quality and delivery aside): The traditional news media is rapidly losing subscribers to the internet, even though without original content from the journalists at NY Times, WSJ, Washington Post, etc. there would be very little for the aggregators to aggregate, and way less core material for bloggers to blog about.

It would be a shame to see a world without paid, professional journalists, especially investigative journalists (just think, Nixon would have served out two full terms, and Cheney might never have had to defend his "enhanced interrogative techniques"). But if the public continues to insist that news should be free, and newspapers are unable to find a way to monetize their content that gets freely aggregated, that's probably where we're headed.

Not a popular opinion, I'm sure, but maybe better public awareness of this issue may force some of the major aggregators to finance a portion of the circulation losses at the newspapers whose content they syndicate.

J.

Posted at 09:13 AM on Sep 1, 2009 by Joe Lichtenberg

Yes, I agree, a world without paid journalists would be bad. But why do we have to pay for all that other stuff we don't like.

I'm heartened by what Huffington Post is doing by starting an investigative arm, and by other companies that have figured out how to pay journalists to break stories (see my favs Paid Content, GigaOm and many others).

Journalism is alive, and the best will get paid. They just won't be entrenched in late and expensive wrappers.

Posted at 12:31 PM on Sep 1, 2009 by Jim Louderback

400 words to tell us you like the internet better than newspapers, related with a smug attitude to boot. I think the 10th edition of "Open That Bottle" actually had more insight than this piece of filler.

Posted at 10:18 AM on Sep 29, 2009 by Reader