WSJ. Flailing Before It's Even Launched
Ryan Tate · 07/23/08 08:37AMRupert Murdoch and his deputy Robert Thomson are eager to get the Wall Street Journal's new magazine off the ground. The publication, WSJ., is to get the Journal in on a consumer-glossy bonanza that now nets the Times' T magazine $46 million in annual revenue and helped it grow 12 percent last year. Murdoch and Thomson are so keen on this concept that they're racing ahead with WSJ. even though it was conceived under the Journal's prior owners, the Bancrofts' Dow Jones. So convinced are the News Corp. executives of the magazine's future success that, the Observer reports in today's paper, they are making staff sign a "code of conduct" to ensure they will not be swayed by the inevitable mob of overeager advertisers. But to hear one reliable inside source tell it, WSJ. will be lucky to launch without embarrassing itself on the editorial side, to say nothing of selling ads.