Fond of the daily news coverage delivered by The Wall Street Journal, but unimpressed by the visual presence of the paper’s online offering? Well, you’re going to have to wait ‘til autumn to see any major changes to the website’s layout. According to information gathered for a report published in this week’s edition of Newsweek, WSJ.com is slated to get done up fresh sometime in Q3 2008. So any criticisms, good or bad, will have to wait several more months.
Even more interesting to hear from the top of the News Corp ladder, however, is that Papa Murdoch is most definitely following through on his promise to go straight after The New York Times in a battle for breaking stories and both national and international influence. Which means that the WSJ and NYT are going to be seeking more and more computer screens to inhabit in the years ahead, regardless of how well their respective paper-based circulation efforts go in the foreseeable future. So, you know, that swift loss in revenue for The New York Times reported quite recently? Yeah, things are definitely going to have to pick up for the Sulzberger team, because regardless of how well the WSJ does in the near term, financially speaking, Murdoch pledges to throw enough added investment into the operation to achieve his goals. If that means his providing the paper’s online operation with a hefty boost out of pocket, so be it. He may default on a conservative political line, but his spending for things he hold dear - and the WSJ is most precious addition made to his extensive media-rich keychain - is quite liberal indeed.
Of course, neither party can defy the laws of newsroom physics. The question on many minds today is just how much pain and bloodletting will newspapers (some more than others) have to endure before things shape up, on and off the Web. Right now, Murdoch, given his globally diversified holdings, isn’t doing too bad. Some properties are lagging, but others are doing enormously well. Fox News being only one of them. The New York Times Company, on the other hand, is showing clear signs of struggle. It has been focusing on newsroom efficiency whilst cutting staff, and has been pushing for strong growth in online advertising through a joint project with Tribune, Gannet, and Hearst, called quadrantONE. Needless to say, a return to lavish financial status has been slow-going. I suspect it will take at least a couple of years before it’s Web presence really starts to rake some big coins.