An Embarrassing Start For The New Wall Street Journal Europe Which Is A Pity Because It Is An Improved Read

Philip M. Stone November 18, 2009 Follow on Twitter

The Wall Street Journal Europe relaunched Tuesday and overall it is a better read but day one put in focus a major timing problem – its top front page headline was outdated by early Monday evening let alone when it was read by its 85,000 or so subscribers Tuesday morning. Maybe the lesson there is to keep such a breaking news story off page one as did The International Herald Tribune or at least update that front page story with a one paragraph insert as did The Financial Times.

The WSJE’s top headline was “Bernanke moves to defend dollar” and it truly was a big story because usually the Fed chairman doesn’t discuss such things – it’s something usually left to the Treasury secretary and he doesn’t do it very often. So no doubt about it – this was big financial news. But that’s as far as the WSJE apparently had time to take it and so it missed out on the quick market reaction -- at first the dollar edged up and then analysts seemed to agree there was no action behind Bernanke’s words and the dollar fell back. The jawboning had not worked, but you wouldn’t know that from the WSJE. (See WSJE November 17 cover here PDF)

At the FT, the fourth paragraph told that the dollar went up and then fell back, so it was covered. At the International Herald Tribune the story didn’t make page 1 but rather page 22 in the business section at the bottom of the page. It did not have the additional information about the dollar going up and then falling back. One could easily question why this was not a page 1 story for the IHT – maybe that page is made up extra early since it most consists of long-winded New York Times articles and features which couldn’t be disturbed?

We asked the Wall Street Journal Europe’s PR people a couple of times when the paper is put to bed, but there was no response. So, here’s the rub. MarketWatch, also owned by Dow Jones, had a full and complete story on the Internet, written by two journalists, with a 3:47 Eastern time-off (8:47 London time where the newspaper is produced) with the headline, “Dollar Falls to new 15-month low; Bernanke-inspired recovery’s short-lived”.  Since MarketWatch had the complete story with the dollar’s ups and downs on the Internet by 8:47 London time that means the information was available well before then, but the WSJE’s story was not updated. That’s a big editorial faux-pas.

We don’t expect print to compete with the Internet on breaking news, but we do expect that information known by at least 2047 UK time should be in the newspaper delivered the next morning. Or, if that really is too difficult given distribution logistics then as we said at the beginning of this column, forget the breaking news to escape such embarrassments and just concentrate on the long analytical features.

Putting that to one side, the new WSJE is a more interesting read than its predecessor, but it is still not where it needs to be. There were a couple of interesting clues on the front page pointing to future direction -- one of its promo boxes at the top of the page pushed a page 36 sports feature about the increased need for sports statistical data, and then there was a very nice Reuters portrait of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seemingly deep in thought at a UN meeting with the caption mentioning that his trial on a tax fraud charge had reopened the same day, leaving the reader to believe that was why the prime minister was so pensive.

But turn to page 38 in the World Watch column and in a one paragraph brief you learn that the trial was actually immediately adjourned until January so the prime minister could make arrangements in his schedule to attend. Surely that information should have been in the caption, too, but then that may have destroyed the picture’s purpose for its headline read, “Addressing a cause overshadows a court date.” The picture was obviously chosen for its artistic value, it wasn’t a financial picture, but it was a good picture all the same giving the hint that, as in the US, the European edition may drift further towards general news.

That, incidentally, is no bad thing. When this writer was the financial news products manager for Reuters in Europe a few years back one of the interesting gems picked up from talking with clients was their thirst for general news about countries in addition to the financial data.  A conversation at that time also concerned Berlusconi and his then legal and political problems and a dealer made the point of saying that one judges the stability of a government, and a country and whether to invest there by what is happening with its leaders, so all of the upheaval news then going on in Italy was very important. No doubt the same is true today.

The WSJE’s story content was quite good but again we repeat our complaint made at the last relaunch (October, 2006) that there still is not enough color and no steps taken to break up the gray type. For instance, page four was devoted to Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy being the odds-on favorite to become the EU’s first president, with a large picture and five columns of text. But no color – all black and white, and frankly, not a very inviting read. The picture should have been in color and the text needed some boldface break-ups.   

The paper claims it now has more color than it did, and if this is so then it is still very much a work in progress. No color at all, for instance on pages 6-12, except for page 11 which was a full page house ad promoting a WSJ conference that had a few lines blue type. Further in the paper there were continuing news pages again all in black and white. Also notable that on those editorial pages near the front there was no advertising – a sign of how tough things are out there?

So, how did the 40-page compact WSJE compare with the 34-page broadsheet Financial Times? Actually, not bad. The FT also needs a lot more color although there may be some genius printing on the pink paper – it adds a color dimension and black and white pictures and text do not look as stark as they do in the white WSJE. On the content front the two are complimentary – a large number of stories are different. You could argue that if you really wanted to immerse yourself in what was going on in the business world you would want to take a look at both daily.

But to do with any sort of economics you need subscriptions. Here in Switzerland the newsstand price of the FT is the equivalent of about £3.20 ($5.40) and for the WSJE it is £3 ($5). Fine for the expense account but not for the ordinary bloke.