From the WSJ Opinion Archives
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A Report to Our Readers
Welcome to the newspaper of tomorrow.
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Dear Reader:
This letter continues a custom begun 30 years ago of reporting the progress of The Wall Street Journal to our readers. In the first issue of the Journal, in 1889, founders Charles Dow and Edward Jones wrote that, "We appreciate the confidence reposed in our work. We mean to make it better." It's in this spirit that I brief you on our efforts to make the Journal better.
| Try Us, in Print and Online
We want to be your all-day-long source of business news.
Prepare for the day with the print Journal to understand what the news means,
then go online throughout the day for news updates, in-depth searching and
breaking news sent to your mobile device.
Sample the Journal. We want as many people as possible to experience
the Journal, in print and online. Today, almost a half million print Journals
will be available free at newsstands. The Wall Street Journal Online is
also free for the day, at www.WSJ.com. Print subscribers who'd like a
free month of WSJ.com can sign up at www.wsj.com/freetrial
to see the benefits of print and online together.
"Mentoring" young executives. Many young executives prefer digital
sources, and some are not yet in the habit of reading a newspaper. We've
heard from many readers who think that their young colleagues miss out
on being broadly and well informed if they don't read the print Journal.
This year we're starting a new mentoring program to address this issue.
We're reaching out through employers to work with companies to show their
young executives why the rethought print Journal is essential for them.
If you or your company would like to learn more about our mentoring program,
please write me at publisher@wsj.com.
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What hasn't changed is the Journal's central tradition: Our commitment to delivering the highest quality journalism. This means authoritative, accurate and fair reporting, as well as providing exclusive analysis, context and perspective designed for our community of readers.
Indeed, at the Journal, we embrace both change and tradition. Significant as today's changes are, they are part of a constant evolution. The original Journal of the 19th Century was a narrow markets-focused newspaper for the country's then-fewer than 200,000 shareholders. The second major evolution of the Journal occurred in the 1940s when visionary editors reconceived what a newspaper could be. They changed the Journal to become the agenda-setting focal point for a new community of interest, made up of national (now global) business leaders and other professionals. Today's third evolution of the Journal--internally we call it "Journal 3.0"--builds on this heritage and on the large, influential and engaged readership that makes up the Journal community.
Your print Journal will now focus even more on "what the news means," beyond simply what happened yesterday. Even as Journal reporters focus on forward-looking journalism, we've added new features to ensure that you don't miss anything of importance from the previous day. The Wall Street Journal Online is the place to go for "what's happening right now" news on the Web, through mobile devices and across online video and audio. Today we also launch the online Markets Data Center, a free area of WSJ.com, which has prices on more than 50,000 stocks and funds, performance data and investing tools. We continue to launch new online features, including new regularly updated blogs on personal wealth and on balancing work and family.
Whatever the look and feel or the medium in which you read, we know that what matters most is the journalism. This past year has been notable by any standard. It's a time of change--not just for media, but also for business generally and for other key institutions such as governments. As information flows more freely, activities that were once hidden became headlines.
Among hundreds of Journal market-moving scoops in 2006, reporters Charles Forelle and James Bandler broke the year's biggest business story, on the backdating of stock options. They sifted through thousands of securities filings to identify firms with unusual patterns of option grants. Mr. Forelle, a recent Yale math major, used a custom-built algorithm to assess the odds of especially lucrative timing of option grants, diverting Dow Jones corporate computer servers in our Princeton offices to crunch the numbers. In one instance, the analysis found that the odds of a company awarding stock options as it did were 300-billion-to-one against. More than 130 companies have since come under federal investigation, more than 60 officials at different companies have forfeited their jobs and there are criminal charges against five people.
The Journal also broke the story of how Hewlett-Packard executives took a media-leak investigation so far that they used private phone records, including those of our Pui Wing-Tam, who first reported a split on the H-P board. A page one profile of former chairman Patricia Dunn put a human struggle at the center of the story.
Our editorial page had a busy year in its mission of "Free Markets, Free People." Editorials defended our fragile rule of law by exposing the fraud behind so much of the silicosis and asbestos litigation, campaigning against post-Enron regulatory excesses and observing that many of the high-profile cases brought by New York Attorney General (now Governor) Eliot Spitzer ended up as prosecutorial defeats. No one who read our editorials on the Republican Congress's failures on spending, immigration and ethics was surprised when the party lost the November elections.
This journalism is possible thanks to the dedication of thousands of people across departments including Circulation, Advertising, Marketing, Technology, Operations, Printing and Distribution. More than 600 Journal colleagues gave up much of their December weekends to ensure that our production systems would operate effectively at today's new page size, producing two million copies a day at our 19 presses.
The Journal is also a business, so some comments on our performance may be of interest. This is an era of great financial pressure on many news companies, as business models change, bringing new challenges especially for more established media outlets such as newspapers. I sometimes feel like the last person in the country with "newspaper publisher" in his title who nonetheless is an optimist. This reflects the Journal's appeal to the unique community of which you are a member. More people pay to subscribe to the Journal than to any other newspaper in the country, and more people pay to subscribe to WSJ.com--just under 800,000--than to any other news site on the entire Web.
In 2006, we increased by 10% the number of individuals who subscribe to the print Journal, as we retained our overall print circulation of about 1.7 million. This increase in the "individually paid" category of circulation bucked the declining trend of almost all large newspapers and reflected our largest percentage gain since 1980. One reason is that we now offer the print and online Journal in a single package. More and more readers understand that the way to derive the greatest value from the Journal is to consume it across media (print, online and other digital products) throughout the day, accessing each version for what it delivers best.
We also aim to serve our advertisers well--and better than any other media company. In 2006, advertising revenues in the Journal increased more than in any of the other more than 250 newspapers and magazines in the country tracked by CMR, the leading print advertising researcher. This reflects the addition of Weekend Edition and increases in our share of advertising in many categories, from financial services to luxury goods. For 2007, we're moving to standard advertising units and revenue contracts covering print and online, which will make the Journal an easier place for advertisers to do business. At a time when many other print publications are reducing their investments, we're adding more pages of color capacity by 2009 under a $30 million capital program aimed at further modernizing and brightening the newspaper.
And in an age where many print publishers are cutting back on their newsrooms in an attempt to recover a portion of lost profitability, we're focused on continuing to grow our revenues and on finding ways for our journalists to apply even more of their talents to truly differentiated coverage.
Our greatest source of pride is the confidence our readers place in us. This is especially so in this age of rapid technological change, global complexity, economic uncertainty, scandal and doubt. Public faith in institutions, including in many media outlets, is routinely tested these days. The Pew Research Center over the summer updated its study, most recently conducted in 2004, which focuses on the relative reputations among the leading news organizations. We were delighted that the Pew research found that the Journal remains the country's most trusted and most non-partisan publication.
Our trust was also recognized overseas. In 2002, the Journal reported that Saudi Arabia was monitoring bank accounts to ensure that no funds finance terrorism. We were sued for defamation in London. The highest court in England ruled that the media can defend against libel if the article is in the public interest and if it reflected serious and responsible journalism. The ruling said the Journal article was "a serious contribution in measured tone to a subject of very considerable importance." One opinion said, "We need more such serious journalism in this country and our defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it."
And so in an era of change, we embrace our traditions: Focusing on what the news means to our readers, reinforcing our commitment to fairness and accuracy in our reporting and bringing values of integrity and transparency to our business dealings.
As we recommit ourselves to the high standards you expect from us, my colleagues across the Journal join me in wishing you a healthy and prosperous year ahead.
Mr. Crovtiz is publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
