So Much For Brussels!

Philip M. Stone June 17, 2009 Follow on Twitter

So much for Brussels, the capital of Europe being Europe’s news hub. The Wall Street Journal Europe has finally confirmed what it has denied for more than a year – that it was moving its main editorial offices from Brussels to London. It brings back to mind a similar move by United Press International that moved its European headquarters from London to Brussels in 1972 only to move it back to London some 20 years later.

UPI’s European headquarters had been on Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street across from the News of the World, but in 1972 with Brussels ballyhooed as the new expanded capital of Europe UPI decided to give up Bouverie Street for Rue de la Loi 34, just down the road from the EC’s headquarters.

The Wall Street Journal Europe started life in 1983 with its main editorial offices in Brussels for the same reason – Brussels should be where Europe’s news action is and surely a European-wide news entity should be located in the continent’s capital.

Well, all of those heady days are long ago past. It wasn’t that long after UPI moved back to London that it closed all of its European bureaus except for London in January 1997.

The WSJE, however, is keeping open an active Brussels bureau but London becomes European headquarters. And while one would think that Brussels should be the news capital of Europe because of all that European Commission activity the truth is the Brussels dateline isn’t seen as often as one might think. So why headquarter a news organization there when London, without doubt, is Europe’s financial headquarters, and probably its news capital, too.

In announcing its move the WSJE also confirmed that it had hired Patience Wheatcroft as its editor-in-chief for Europe. That probably wasn’t too difficult a decision for Robert Thomson, now editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor at the Wall Street Journal for when Thomson was editor of The Times of London Wheatcroft was his business editor and she did real good in getting business pages readership up. She later became editor of The Sunday Telegraph for a very short stint – she was fired - but obviously Thomson remembers former colleagues who did him good. If Ms. Wheatcroft wasn’t willing to move to Brussels then just move Brussels to London.

In announcing Wheatcroft’s appointment, Thomson basically declared war on the Financial Times. “The time has come for the Journal to take on the European market, in print and online,” he declared. He said he expected The Journal to become “a formidable force in Europe.”

To do that Wheatcroft has her work cut out for her. First she will organize an integrated newsroom – print editorial and online – and no doubt there will be a lot of emphasis on breaking news online.

Her big problem, however, is how to expand the print newspaper circulation. Ever since the WSJE turned compact in October, 2005 (tabloid was considered too dirty a word to use) the WSJE has been an overwhelmingly boring read. No one can deny that Dow Jones has good editorial material but those stories just seem so gray and boring in the compact newspaper and, after all, many of those features are written for the US market, not Europe which is another important problem Wheatcroft needs to fix because the bulk of the WSJE readership is not American. But as things stand, being compact size is not kind to the WSJE; the paper needs a makeover, but it will still be just bandages until it moves back to its broadsheet heritage.

Now since Thomson was behind The Times moving from broadsheet to compact, it’s doubtful that the WSJE will return to those broadsheet roots, but whereas The Times made compact work, the WSJE simply hasn’t.   Perhaps it is no coincidence that the WSJ in the US, for all of its changes, did not make that same ultimate switch to compact.

The WSJE’s circulation has been lethargic for recent years around 80,000 – 85,000 even though it offers its web site free to print subscribers. So with the Financial Times in the UK, Ireland andEurope having a circulation of some 232,000 the WSJE has a ways to go as it starts what its publisher calls, “A fresh new start in Europe as we work smarter to target new readers, develop additional attractive advertising opportunities, and create content that speaks directly to our audience.”

And that’s from an FT so confident that it raised its newsstand price twice in the past year. Its chiefexecutive explained recently, "We've seen a strong and sustained rise in content revenues at the FT over the last few years as readers and subscribers realize that valuable content is worth paying a premium for."

So, take the comments from both publishers as the starting point, mix, and it should be a fun war.