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Five Questions with...Alan Murray

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Alan Murray talks to Kanupriya Vashisht about his role as executive editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, changes to the site’s business model and the organization’s new ownership.

By Kanupriya Vashisht

1. What expanded potential do you see for The Wall Street Journal under the new ownership?

We have a new owner who loves newspapers and wants ours to be the very best. At a time when everyone else in the industry is in virtual crisis, that feels pretty good.

2. How do you see your new role in terms of directing the Journal's news product?

I have editorial responsibility for everything we do other than the print paper. That includes WSJ.com, MarketWatch, television, conferences and books. These are all growth areas, but WSJ.com is the most exciting right now.
It was created to be a news site that serves paying subscribers, and we've been very successful at that -- more than one million paid subscribers, which is unheard of on the Web. Now, we have an opportunity to reinvent the site and attract a dramatically larger audience. That's a challenge, but it's fun.

3. The Wall Street Journal seems to now be expanding into new coverage areas. Can you talk a little about this?

We've been doing that for the last decade -- increasingly writing about what we call “The Business of Life” - travel, food, cocktails, you name it. We've got great columnists such as Laura Landro who writes "The Finicky Traveler" and John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter who write the wine column. What we've discovered is that our readers care about business, but they also like to live well. You can expect us to keep expanding in those areas and to do more general news in addition to business news.

4. Will WSJ.com actually be able to multiply its online subscriber base twelve fold by making it free and how will this affect the print product?

I saw the analysis that said we'd need to grow traffic twelve fold in order to break even, and I think it's bogus. But I can tell you this: Everybody here wants to grow our traffic, and without getting into the precise business model, I'm confident we're going to do it.

5. As a result, will the organization be better positioned to take advantage of new media?

Yes.

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