Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal
WSJ Live seeing strong growth
by Chris Roush
Steven Rosenbaum of Forbes.com writes about how WSJ Live, which is The Wall Street Journal’s live video operation, had 28 million dowloads in August, up four times from a year ago.
Rosenbaum writes, “One thing that the Journal has done with video is embrace a wide ranging syndication strategy. Murray said there are new 28 distribution partners who take the WSJ Live feed – including AOL, Boxee, Hulu, Roku, YouTube, iPad, Google TV, and Apple TV. In addition it is available on a number of connected TV’s including Samsung, Sony and Yahoo’s Connected TV platform.
“WSJ Live offers four hours of original programming a day, tapping the Journal’s network of 2,000 journalists.
“Murray said the launch of World Stream is a global video newsgathering and publishing platform for short-form videos shot via smartphone by journalists from across the global Journal and Dow Jones news organization. WSJ WorldStream consists of footage shot by Dow Jones and Journal reporters and editors on smartphones. This puts more than 2,000 journalists potentially in the network. WSJ says each video is less than a minute, and all footage is reviewed by an editor before being posted to the stream. Turnaround time is condensed to just a few minutes between shooting and posting video so that the content can be delivered from the journalists in near real-time.”
Read more here.
WSJ/Dow Jones looking for temp reporters in northern Europe
by Chris Roush
John Stoll, the Nordics bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, sent out the following email to the staff on Friday:
Our combined WSJ/DJN Nordic bureau is in the market for hungry reporters looking to spend a few months in Scandinavia compiling a portfolio of unforgettable features and hard fought scoops. This short-term reporting opportunity comes as some key Dow Jones journalists in Stockholm take breaks for parental leave. The region includes Iceland, Greenland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Baltics — making for a landscape of delightful yarns and potential newsbreaks. Companies like H&M, IKEA, Electrolux and Volvo are household names. Finland’s role as the lone Nordic voice in the euro zone is a source of endless fascination for debt-crisis watchers. Norway’s swimming in oil and a key player in global energy markets.
A scribe with a Viking-like work ethic could be a factory of stories and videos fit for all sections of the paper and online. Requirements include a demonstrated ability to break news and write broad stories worthy of WSJ’s and DJN’s audience. Discuss the opportunity with your bureau chief and then contact me to get the process rolling.
Fashion Friday
by Liz Hester
On a recent trip to New York, I was sitting out a two-hour plane delay watching the U.S. Open and drinking a beer.
Half of the screens in the bar were tuned into the NFL’s opening game. What follows is my best reconstruction of the conversation between two guys standing behind me:
Guy 1: Move it, move it, move it….they’ve got to get the ball down the field!
Guy 2: Run! Run!
Guy 1: Did you see (insert important designer name) and the new collection?
Guy 2: No, but it’s hard with football and fashion….
Guy 1: I know! They really should delay Fashion Week until after the NFL season starts.
Guy 2: Actually, they should just delay the NFL start until after Fashion Week.
Guy 1: So true.
My first thought was, “Seriously?” My second was, “I don’t know any man who would beg to delay the start of football for clothes.”
And then it hit me: fashion is now a huge spectator sport, which makes it big business, and big for business journalism.
The Wall Street Journal has an entire Fashion section – at least online. Its WSJ. magazine is very fashion-centric. The paper’s PR staff even sent out a release Thursday detailing its plans for Fashion Week coverage, which ranges from video packages to blogs to Twitter feeds and, oh yeah, a dedicated URL — http://wsj.com/fashionweek.
The New York Times devotes two sections a week to Style and typically covers the shows in Paris, London, Milan and New York.
Just take a look at the numbers for New York’s version of Fashion Week compiled by The Guardian. That’s $20 million funneling into the local economy. It’s estimated that women’s fashion will be a $620 billion industry in 2014.
There’s even a global series of events to promote the culture of spending called Fashion’s Night Out. Held across the globe, the event started in 2009 by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, showcases designers and draws thousands to stores. As the Associated Press reported:
On Twitter, Fashion’s Night Out’s hashtag, (hash)FNO, was one of the top trending keywords. Laura Ashley tweeted about goodie bags while designer shoe label Christian Louboutin shared a special Fashion’s Night Out Spotify playlist.
Kelly Talamas, director of Vogue Mexico & Latin America, said that last year’s Fashion’s Night Out boosted local sales. For its second year, Fashion’s Night Out Mexico more than doubled the number of participating stores, to 250 from 100 in 2011. FNO Mexico will also expand to the Mexican city of Guadalajara, where activities will be held Sept. 13.
But it’s not just the mega stores and brands that are now getting in on the action. Recently, the Journal wrote a story about the increasing pace of young fashion designers putting out collections:
The voracious appetite for newness from retailers, fashion magazines and the fashion blogosphere is also pushing younger designer labels to grow up much faster than labels that launched in the 1980s and ’90s. Unlike other industries, it isn’t production breakthroughs spurring the pace of product launches. Instead, the change is more about the style sector’s lightning-speed buzz factor: Today’s wannabe is tomorrow’s in-demand designer who is increasingly striking with new lines while the iron is hot.
Decreasing the cycle and putting out more items spurs consumers to purchase more in order to stay on top of the trends. And none of that really includes knock-offs and the huge market for cheaply made goods emulating top designers’ looks.
But it seems, the only way to make money in fashion is to mass-produce it. Adam Davidson’s piece in the Times magazine about what goes into a $4,000 bespoke suit points out that makes of custom, labor-intensive items aren’t getting rich off their work. But Marc Jacobs is worth about $100 million.
And fashion houses will do a lot to protect their income, brands and images. Covering the recent court case between Christian Louboutin SA and Yves Saint Laurent over the use of red soles, WSJ’s Chad Bray writes:
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday found that Louboutin had the right to trademark protection for its red soles, as long as they contrasted with the rest of the shoe. However, the ruling, while in its favor, fell short of Louboutin’s goal of keeping YSL’s red-soled, monochrome shoe off the market.
Given the number of women buying shoes as status symbols, it could cost Louboutin thousands of dollars in sales if YSL takes some of their business. Or it could be that women will decide they want shoes with blue soles.
It’s hard to say, but what’s sure is that people will continue to buy, and that’s good for business.
WSJ.com enhances navigation
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal’s website has introduced some new enhancements to its navigation.
A note on the site states, “First, there are several editions of WSJ.com that can be set as the default home page, including U.S., Europe, Asia and many international local-language editions, including Chinese-language and Japanese-language. Today we have made those choices more prominent and easier to find – just under The Wall Street Journal logo at the very top of the home page. In addition, a ‘Quicklinks’ bar has been added beneath the main navigation, allowing for easier access to popular features such as Today’s Paper, the WSJ Live video center and blogs.
“Finally, the main navigation now features a direct link to the Market Data Center. As part of these navigation changes, you can now find a direct link to the Personal Finance section under ‘Markets,’ while the Small Business section is now listed under ‘Business.’”
Read more here.
Trying to make sense of the Fed
by Liz Hester
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Friday revealed the central bank was poised to take further action to help the economy. In what several described as uncharacteristically strong language, Bernanke called continuing high unemployment rate a “grave concern” and indicated the bank was poised to take action to stimulate the lagging economy.
Bernanke said that while the Fed’s monetary policy had helped the economy, it was clear that more action was necessary and that potential gains outweighed the costs of doing so.
Many organizations covering his speech indicated that Bernanke was going to have a harder time selling the benefits of this policy to an increasingly skeptical public. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jon Hilsenrath said:
But economists and central bankers wondered more openly than usual if the Fed had the tools to fix the problems of the day and expressed frustration that four years of super low interest rates and extraordinary money-pumping by the Fed hadn’t done more to spur the slow-moving economy.
In a post for the New York Times’ Economix blog, Binyamin Appelbaum wrote that most attendees at the conference agreed the action the Fed was considering wouldn’t do enough to fix the economy.
What more can be done? Well, pretty much everyone here is upset about the breakdown of fiscal policy, which is becoming a principal drag on growth.
Indeed, quite a few attendees regard that as the entire issue. They do not agree on what fiscal policies are needed. (The grab bag includes tax cuts and spending increases, household debt reduction and government debt reduction.) But they do agree that monetary policy has basically done (almost) all that it can.
Appelbaum goes on to write about several options proposed to stimulate the economy including one from Michael Woodford, a Columbia University professor, who said the Fed could lift growth now by indicating it would tolerate inflation in the future after the economy begins to recover.
San Francisco Fed President John Williams, who joined several others in encouraging a plan for open-ended bond-buying was quoted in a Bloomberg News story as saying the program could be larger than QE2.
One of the problems with this plan is that it may not work. As the Wall Street Journal reported:
The key problem, said University of Chicago professor Amir Sufi, is that households burdened by heavy debt loads aren’t responding to low interest rates by spending more, as typically happens in a crisis. They need to reduce their debt first, he said. “I’m not so convinced that monetary policy can play a big role,” he said.
And that’s the real point. The Fed may not have a lot of options left, but neither to most people. Monetary policy is falling short in terms of fixing the economy. As the Times reported:
Donald L. Kohn, a former Fed vice chairman, asked Saturday why the Fed’s unprecedented efforts so far had produced “so little growth.”
“The fact that we keep trying to bring spending from the future to the present with lower and lower interest rates, are there diminishing returns?” he asked. “There’s a lot we don’t understand and it’s hard to make policy if you don’t.”
It’s likely that markets will give the Fed’s plans a lackluster welcome and will remain volatile going into last quarter of the year. But given the tepid recovery and that the economy continues to limp along, it’s obvious that monetary policy can only go so far to stimulate the economy.
WSJ video traffic has doubled in past six months
by Chris Roush
Ken Doctor writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab about how newspapers are increasing their video offerings and interviewed Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Alan Murray, who said that the paper’s video traffic has doubled in the past six months.
Doctor writes, “Why? It’s not mainly because of more use on Journal platforms, even though it’s been an innovator on the tablet. Most of that growth comes from the deals the Journal has done with an astonishing 26 ‘platforms.’ They range from the ubiquitous iPad and Kindle to lesser known 5Min and LiveStation.
Doctor later writes, “Both the Journal and the Times see their reporters as the foundation of the video process; Murray calls Dow Jones’ 2,000 journalists ‘the core asset.’ So both are putting cameras into the hands of journalists, or enabling them to better use smartphones, thereby creating more impactful, multi-dimensional, multi-platform journalism. HuffPo, from its early days of being mainly a curator/aggregator, has had its pulse on what its progressive audience is wondering and talking about.
“Those topics, mostly off the news (Marissa Mayer’s pregnancy, veterans and poverty), are the ones front and center in its Live pages. Some, of course, derive from its journalists’ work, and now staffers like Howard Fineman are suggesting video segments as they prepare stories. By and large, though, the talk-about-news drives the 12-hours-a-day site (5 days a week), with actual news supplementing. Sekoff says some 1,300 HuffPo community members have ‘raised their hands’ and been featured as talking contributors on its segments. They’re unpolished and a far more diverse (for all the good and bad that implies) lot than we see among the too familiar faces of cable TV. For the Journal and the Times, traditional stories drive the video.”
Read more here.
WSJ.com and Dow Jones Newswires to integrate London editing desk
by Chris Roush
Steve McGrath, editor for news at Dow Jones Newswires in London, sent out the following announcement on Wednesday:
We are integrating our newswires and wsj.com editing desks in London to better reflect the integration we’ve already implemented in our European bureaus. We’re aiming to eliminate much of the duplicate editing that happens today, and also reduce the amount of editors’ time wasted in reformatting copy as it flows between the world of wires and the wsj.com universe.
From September 10th, we will have one pan-asset class real-time editing desk, handling headlines, quick fills, and spot news items destined only for real-time platforms like FX Trader or wires. The desk will be headed by James Keighley and Brian Reid. Ben Winkley, (right) who currently heads the wires resources editing desk, is moving to a new role heading up the London oil markets team.
The news desk will handle all updates and pre-planned big-story coverage for all platforms, including wsj.com and wires. This desk will be staffed by the current wsj.com editors — Lydia Serota, Laurence Witherington and Peter Stiff — who will be joined by five editors from the current wires desks – Tom Mudd, Michael Wright, John Kohut, Alistair Holloway and Liza Hearon. The team will be managed by Adrian Kerr, who reports to WSJE Managing Editor Terry Roth.
We will have new, simplified newsstation routing codes, as well as email addresses for filing to the new desks. The news desk will be working in Methode. Details on how to file to the new desks will follow ahead of the launch.
WSJ hosting pop-up cafe in London for tech companies
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal will target the technology sector by hosting a pop-up café in London’s Tech City next month.
Jamie Kaffash of Marketing Week writes, “The publication hopes to raise the profile of its technological output and increase engagement between its team and the audience.
“Ben Rooney, the journal’s European technology editor, says: ‘Our Tech Europe blog has been helping tell Europe’s tech story for almost two years now, and our first ever Tech Café will allow us to bring all this coverage to a wider audience. I hope we’ll have some thought-provoking, engaging and even controversial discussion on some of the big topics in tech.’
“The so-called ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in Old Street and the surrounding areas has been the home of many new tech start-ups, following attempts by the Coalition Government to turn the area into a world-leading technological city.
“A report earlier this year by the think-tank Demos estimated that there were 3,200 firms and over 48,000 jobs in the area.”
Read more here.
Biz journalists who now shoot video
by Chris Roush
Adrienne LaFrance of the Nieman Journalism Lab writes Monday about The Wall Street Journal‘s new WorldStream, where journalists are shooting video with their phones of events they are covering and downloading them onto the paper’s website.
LaFrance writes, “While WorldStream aims to be a way for viewers to get a potpourri of fresh video content, it is first and foremost an internal newsroom tool that the Journal has opted to make public. Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor for the newspaper online, says he had long been looking for a way to, er, streamline the filing process for video.
“To do this, the Journal worked with Tout, which created an app especially for the paper so reporters can file video straight from their smartphones with little fuss. (Tout users can normally upload 15-second videos, but The Wall Street Journal’s proprietary Tout app gives reporters a luxurious 45 seconds.) Before showing up in the WorldStream, videos have to be cleared by an editor. In WorldStream’s nascence, Murray says videos that are filed but kept off the stream are the exception to the rule: Most of what they get is what you see. But there will be times when the Journal opts to keep a video private so as not to ‘tip off the competition,’ or in cases where further explanation is needed for proper contextualization.
“‘This is kind of like an internal work tool that’s being exposed to the public,’ Murray told me. ‘The work tool still functions even if we don’t expose it.’
“For the 400-plus reporters whom The Wall Street Journal has trained to shoot video, WorldStream conceivably makes the process much easier: They see someone or something interesting. They shoot, and they file. ‘They don’t have to worry about it after,’ Murray said. ‘It actually removed friction from the process… What this does is just give them an outlet.’”
Read more here.
WSJ launches Worldstream
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal announced Monday the launch of WSJ WorldStream, a global video news gathering and publishing platform for short-form videos shot via smartphone by journalists from across the global Journal and Dow Jones news organization.
Launching in conjunction with the start of the Republican National Convention this week in Tampa, Fla., WSJ WorldStream is the latest addition to WSJ Live, the Journal’s video initiative, which has launched four new shows in the past year from New York, London, Hong Kong, and Washington, DC.
Available on WSJ.com and as a free web app, WSJ WorldStream is powered by Tout, a San Francisco-based technology company.
“Our video viewership has more than doubled in the past six months to over 20 million streams, and the creation of this video blog is a milestone in the expansion of video at the Journal,” said Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor, online, for The Wall Street Journal, in a statement. “From Greg White’s footage of riots in Moscow to Jeremy Page’s reporting in China, many of our reporters are demonstrating the opportunity that technology has given them to capture powerful images that enhance their great journalism. We now have the opportunity to deliver that video more quickly and efficiently for use in our rapidly growing video operation.”
Overseen by Wall Street Journal editorial video director Shawn Bender and real-time video deputy Mark Scheffler, WSJ WorldStream consists solely of footage captured on smartphones by Dow Jones and Journal reporters and editors, utilizing the resources of more than 2,000 journalists worldwide. Each video is under a minute, and all footage is reviewed by an editor before being posted to the stream. Using a custom video publishing app from Tout, turnaround time is condensed to just a few minutes between shooting and posting video so that the content can be delivered from the journalists in near real-time.
The videos will be embedded in stories on WSJ.com, incorporated into the Journal’s daily live video programming, used in produced video packages, easily discoverable on Twitter under the hashtag #worldstream, as well as shared and watched on WSJ WorldStream itself.
