[on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey.
Like many in the broader media ecosystem, I am preparing to head off to the Cannes Lions, a very strange annual affair that should attract close to twelve thousand delegates, as they call them, but far more than that, and probably twice as many.
That's my guesstimate. Because Cannes is not about what goes on in the Palais des Festivals. It's really about everything around it. It's not even a conference.
It's this capitalistic carnival of endless cocktail parties, networking, air kisses, yacht parties, concerts, and yes, business meetings as well. I have been something like fifteen times at this point. I lost track.
I have to go back and, and do an audit. And I try to take a pragmatic view of Cannes utility, otherwise you'll go crazy.
For many of the people who I've asked this over now, like, one and a half decades, they will assure me that this is absolutely an amazing...
not only just an amazing event, but an amazing investment of their time and, and money, because it costs a lot of money in Cannes.
And just as many people, when I ask them if they're going to Cannes, will tell me it's a complete poo dog. So as always, the answer is, um, yes. But anyway, it is always enjoyable.
I, I am not gonna complain about going to the Riviera. That's just... That's ridiculous.
But if you are one of the lucky people going to Cannes, and I think everyone should feel lucky, there's nothing more gauche than complaining about Cannes. I wanna encourage you to get this, this new thing I'm doing.
It's like a texting service. I'm, I'm partnering with Subtext to have this rolling text conversation through the week. Basically, you sign up with your phone number. I'm not gonna spam you.
I'm gonna send you, like, four to five texts a day with my observations and photos and maybe little videos. But they're basically gonna be highlights of, of what I'm observing on the ground.
And my lens for these dispatches is gonna be about what this says about the state of media at this moment as it moves into an entirely new phase that's ruled by AI.
And I'll also be including some of my tips for Cannes and a running commentary on the oddities of this festival that only makes sense once a year in the Riviera.
You can sign up for these dispatches at the link in the show notes. I also have a sign up in the Rebooting newsletter and on the website. Also, we are doing a few gatherings during Cannes.
One of them is gonna be a live recording of the Rebooting show with Willa Bennett and Lisa Ryan. Willa is the editor-in-chief of Cosmo, and Lisa is the global CRO at Hearst. We're doing this at the Hearst House.
We're gonna be looking into the reinvention of Cosmo and what that brand stands for and how you, how you make money off of it now, right? And I think that's, you know, basically something that I discuss all the time.
These, these publishing brands still have a lot of value, particularly legacy brands. And the question ends up being how you make them culturally relevant and then basically monetize them in some way, shape, or form.
Later on in the week, I'm gonna be doing another live podcast. This will be for the People First Algorithms podcast. We're gonna be doing something of a recording plus a cocktail party.
We're not doing that at Hearst because it's at ten AM, and even in Cannes, that's a little aggressive. But we're doing it in the afternoon on Thursday, June eighteenth, at the Dotdash Meredith Villa by their pool.
So it's a really great scene. Highly encourage you to come. I'm gonna have special guests. Troy Young is gonna be joining me, assuming his travel works out.
And we're gonna be joined by Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel, who was just on this podcast, and Axios media correspondent Sarah Fisher, who is a... I think she's been on this two or three times. But I always like Sarah.
Sarah's great at covering this space, and we're gonna have a wonderful conversation about where all this is going, and it'll be the end of the week, so people will be a little punchy, I promise you, 'cause you don't get a lot of sleep there.
You, you're very dehydrated. And I will have a registration for both of these in the show notes and also the newsletter on the Rebooting website.
You know, one of the features that will be at Cannes is the Journal House, and that's the Wall Street Journal's activation.
The Cannes pecking order is something like, you know, the giant tech companies occupy these sprawling beaches. And then, you know, the ad tech set have, have their yachts in the harbor.
And then the publishers have these houses. And, and oftentimes in true Cannes fashion, they're not actually houses. They're actually just part of, of larger buildings.
But be that as it may, they're a place for publishers to hold meetings and do programming, like my session at the Hearst House. But they also, you know, can turn a marketing expense into a profit center.
So I like that, Josh. In the upcoming podcast, I discuss that with Josh Stinchcomb, the chief revenue officer at The Wall Street Journal.
'Cause I think in some ways, you know, the Journal House is symbolic of how the Journal now operates as a strong standalone business. You know, it has, it has got millions of paying subscribers, right?
And it is in a very lucrative area. But it's also the lead brand in a broader portfolio of B2B information assets at, at Dow Jones.
And we get into that and how the, the Journal's commercial strategy is grounded in not just its journalistic authority, but it's increasingly expressed in various ways, whether that's live events or data and insights products or, you know, different, like, councils that the Journal has and these kind of community products.
'Cause I think that, in many ways, is the future for publishing, right?
Like, it's not only to put words on a webpage and put ads next to them, and certainly not, like, to put words in a newspaper and put ads next to those.
That is part of the story, but it's clearly, it's clearly not where most of these brands are, are seeing their growth. It's gonna be around events. It's gonna be around convening.
It's gonna be around setting up these communities and networks so people can connect to each other. These are, like... A lot of the hallmarks, honestly, of, like, B2B are coming to all of publishing.
I mean, you know, The Wall Street Journal is basically in, you know, business to professional, so it's pretty natural for them.
And Josh and I talk about all of that, also how he's thinking about brand safety a- as a competitive advantage.
Also, you know, how, how the Journal presents its, its audience value to advertisers and why institutional trust still gives themAn edge as media fragments and AI slot proliferates. So hope you enjoy the conversation.
Always like to have your feedback. My email is bmaracy@therebooting.com. Gonna have a few podcasts from Can. Say I'm probably gonna do three or four, and looking forward to it. Now here's my conversation with Josh.
[upbeat music] All right, let's get going. Josh- Okay. Welcome, welcome back to the podcast. Always great to talk to you. Yeah, Brian, thanks for having me.
Okay, so I wanna talk about obviously the Journal and, and where the business is right now.
But I think a lot of focus gets placed on what's going on on the editorial side, and obviously there's a divide between the two sides, right? But it's a business, right?
And a lot of the changes that are going on, you know, I, I personally, you know, I think that the, the Journal is, is doing quite well.
Like I, I think it regularly, you know, hits on the right notes, and it's gotten to be a livelier read. Not that it wasn't a lively read, but that's just my outside one-person opinion.
What, what's the challenge o-on the business side right now, and, like, what is the remit? You're coming up to... I guess you guys have a fiscal year that's starting soon, right? Yeah, July 1st is the- Okay...
the new fiscal. All right, so what are the priorities? We've got a number of priorities. As it relates to the, the Journal specifically, you had Emma Tucker, our editor-in-chief, on a, a while back, and I agree with you.
I think she's done a fantastic job making the Journal more interesting, more readable, but not taking away any of its authority, and that's reflected in the audience response, the growth in subscriptions, which just passed for Dow Jones writ large, six million, over four million for the Journal.
So it's never been bigger from a subscriber perspective.
But anecdotally, I hear from clients, executives increasingly that they're finding the Journal is sort of really hitting a, a, a good stride, uh, under her leadership. And so that, that has been great.
It's great for journalism. It's great for our subscription business. And frankly, it's, it's good for the ad business.
I think the, the, the wonderful thing about y-you know, this business or, or at least the, the Journal is the priorities of the newsroom to be more reader-centric, to create more engagement from the most important readers that we have are all priorities for me on the advertising side.
I want more attention from, you know, a very important subset of, of the universe. That's what clients come to us for.
And so if the newsroom is successful in doing that, I've got more quality time and impressions to sell.
And so I don't see those initiatives or, or the agendas of the newsroom and, and at least the ad business at, at odds in any way, and, and they're quite synergistic. Right. Yeah.
So what areas are you, are you most focused on? Yeah, so for, for the upcoming fiscal, we will continue to increase investment in video and audio.
Those have been fast-growing formats across all of our brands, but specifically at the Journal.
We've, you know, I think more than doubled video views on our platform over the past year, and the monetization is following, so it's the, the fastest growing part of our ad business, and I think there's still a lot more we can do there, both on platform and through partnerships.
We were part of the, the beta now, I guess, established brand link product with LinkedIn.
We're producing specific content, video content for LinkedIn, pairing it with brand advertising pre-roll and, and running it across their platform with their targeting.
That's grown three X since the year of launch, so that's an important part of the overall video business for us. So that's, that's number one. Number two is, I think a, a new chapter in, in our leadership business.
So these are the executive councils that we've been running for, you know, north of 10 years in some cases with the CEO council.
We've now got five councils up and running and announced recently the launch of two more in the upcoming fiscal, a chief people officer council and a board of directors council.
So we are both expanding the number of these executive groups and also looking to, to grow them a-and I think the catalyst for that is the creation of The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute run by Alan Murray, former w- former Journal reporter, then CEO of Fortune, obviously, who's come back and built out a team that's specifically focused on curating the experience for these leaders, creating unique content, research, other sort of non-event assets for these communities.
And so, you know, we're only in earnest six months into that, but this will be a year where we have big expectations for the growth of that business and, and are handling it and treating it in a, in a different way than we ever have.
So far the response has been really great. So that's a, a focus. You'll, you'll see experimentation with AI, not only sort of behind the scenes looking at some of our processes, but in the products themselves.
We've recently been testing a number of sort of AI kind of synopses of articles in the Journal, getting an understanding of, you know, who likes it, who doesn't, you know, what do they wanna see from that.
So, you know, no intention certainly to have AI creating the reporting, but augmenting the delivery of it is a place we're experimenting.
And we've been introducing, you know, consumer client-facing AI capabilities in some of our other Dow Jones products like Factiva as well. So you'll see a continuation of, of that.
And then I guess the, the third thing I'd say is trying to connect the dots better for some of our biggest clients who are buying products and services across all of Dow Jones, so not just the media part of our business, but some of our business intelligence tools or even energy tools, and going to market with them in a more streamlined way.
You know, we've got-Actually seven B to include advertising, seven B2B sort of product suites with seven distinct sales teams.
And so we're getting to the point where, you know, for certain clients, we can streamline that experience for better outcomes for them and, and frankly for us. Okay.
So that's across the whole Dow Jones portfolio- Correct... of which the Journal is one part.
What is the ro-- So I wanna get back to each of these things, but like, what, what is the sort of evolving role that, that you see the, of the Journal within the portfolio, right?
Because I, I look at the-- Again, like I didn't, I, I don't... I did a, a podcast with Omar, but it was a few years ago. But I remember we were talking, and we were talking all the B2B stuff, like, you know.
And like, I just always look at like where, where the money is going. And if, if there's a pot of money, they're not d- You know, Dow Jones is not doing M&A for the Journal.
They're doing it to like buy like an energy pricing index.
So you go down the lists and, and it just, to me, I totally get it, and I think every brand, and the Journal is a brand, has like a different role, and the portfolio ha- is, is different now than it was like four years ago.
Yeah. No, Dow Jones has evolved a great deal, and much to the benefit of the overall business from a commercial perspective.
So the Journal is the most recognizable of the, of the brands or the verticals inside of Dow Jones. By far. But, yeah.
But to your point, a lot of the M&A activity, if not all of it in the past few years anyway, has been more on the B2B side. We obviously made a, a big acquisition around energy data and analysis a few years back.
Just recently announced some business acquisitions in the sort of geopolitical risk space. So a lot of the time and attention on expanding Dow Jones has been sort of outside of the Journal.
That said, I think the Journal plays a, a, a really unique role. It's a good business in its own right, even if you look at it in isolation, but it also helps accelerate some of these other businesses.
The, the recognition and the trust that people have in the Journal is a door opener.
The relationships we have with executives from CEOs down through our councils and, and through our long-standing relationship via the Journal becomes then an accelerated way to get into the right people at these companies for these other businesses.
And we can bring elements of the Journal to some of these products and vice versa.
A, a great example, recent example, is we've just launched a product called Risk Journal, which is a B2B subscription that draws on some of the, the data and content from our risk and compliance business, coupled with coverage from the Journal to create sort of a processional sub-product, if you will, leveraging the Journal brand, some of the Journal content, but very much for risk professionals.
And I think you'll see other kind of new products emerge that are sort of Journal plus
X that I think open the door in some of these more verticalized businesses to a sort of news front end, albeit a very niche news front end. It's interesting 'cause, I mean, y-you, you come from Conde, right?
Like where it's like it's filled with brands. Like, I mean, there is a very clear brands.
And then you get into a news context, I feel like in a lot of times w-with good reason because, you know, there's a mission involved and, and, and, and other things, not there isn't a, a mission at both.
But like, it's different, right? And it's very clear that you work for a brand, and the brand is gonna be expressed in a lot of different ways, and the brand's value in the marketplace is gonna be in different ways.
And so I th- I think of that when, with what you're saying, because when you think about the, the councils or whether it's bringing, you know, events to like the Middle East or anything like, you're taking a brand, right?
Like the, and the, the heart of it is what's going on in the newsroom, but that brand has value well beyond the daily news report. For sure.
I mean, the Journal's one of the strongest brands, not only in business, but just, I think in the world of media that exists.
And there's a huge amount of affinity for it, especially amongst the kinds of people we're both selling advertising to, but also selling these other products.
And, and I think we will get further with some of these acquisitions because we can connect it to the Journal brand and tap those relationships than some of these companies could have sort of living in isolation.
And so there's still a, a very strong brand sell there, not only with the Journal, but, but these Journal-adjacent businesses.
So in that way, it's not totally unlike Conde Nast, where, you know, you have these things that represent something very clear and, and big, and, and I think the Journal is maybe even in more rarefied air than it's ever been in that it's highly trusted in a world where not a lot of media is trusted, and it's trusted on both sides of the aisle.
So we're having a, a moment here where the Journal's becoming, you know, one of a very small handful of media brands that still maintains a high degree of trust, and that, that transcends to the other products in Dow Jones when we find smart ways to connect them.
Yeah. So talk to me about the state of the advertising business. Now, I mean, it's, the Journal and its cohort are somewhat protected from a lot of the... I mean, nobody's protected, everyone is in the market.
[chuckles] But it, it is always somewhat, you know, I always, you know, when we do these dinners, you come to a few, like, you know, you or someone like you will be there, like, "Yeah, we're sold out in Q2."
[laughs] And everyone else is just shooting daggers. [laughs] You know. Well, well, look- Which, which it's, it is hard, right? But like, it is a little bit different.
But like the reality is the, the ad market's difficult. Everyone wants to diversify away from, from, from advertising that I talk to.
You know, that's why everyone's talking about events, and they're talking about data, and they're talking about anything other than putting ads on webpages. Yeah.
I mean, look, we're, we're not immune from the, the trials and tribulations of, of the ad business.
We do, I think, have some core endemic categories where-As long as they're spending at all, you know, we're gonna be on a, on a shortlist, and so there's some protection in that.
But the, the profile of our ad business has changed dramatically. I mean, I've been here seven years.
It's been changing, you know, since the, the day I got here, and, and accelerated probably even in the last three years.
I was just looking, you know, just three years ago, the majority of our ad business was still print or what I'll call standard display, you know, digital media.
And in the current fiscal, the majority now of our ad business is either driven by custom content, events, or audio/video.
So, you know, these, these smaller, faster-growing parts of the advertising ecosystem have become the majority for us. Which has a whole host of implications for team organization and skillsets that you need, et cetera.
But, you know, it, it, it is evolving.
You know, the other thing that we've done in recent years is diversify the advertising base, maybe making us look, you know, less like we traditionally did in certain B2B categories, but then more exposed to, you know, market conditions in luxury and consumer markets, 'cause all of a sudden we've got a pretty sizable- Yeah...
luxury ad business, which is reminiscent of my time at Conde Nast. But, you know, which has been a good thing, the diversification.
We were able to grow overall, but, you know, we are now playing in some categories where we are not as, you know, clearly a must-buy maybe as, as, as in some certain traditional categories.
So we, we pay a lot of attention to how the ad market's doing. Knock on wood, for the most part, I think we've fared fairly well. But, you know, we'll see slowdowns in luxury, and that will impact us.
We'll see, you know, changes in what financial services categories are doing, and that will impact us. So it's, it's a bit more of a mosaic than it used to be. Okay, so tariffs have not, like, tanked the ad business?
Is that... I'm reading between the lines. No.
I mean, in, in the short term, I would say the, the sort of tariff rollercoaster we've been on has probably been a good thing for, for the ad business, or I should say the new- Ooh... administration- I like this.
It's counterintuitive... has been a good thing. So at number one, you know, in times of high volatility, especially if it's sort of business or economically driven, we see an influx of traffic and new subscribers.
And so, you know, we've had some of our biggest new subscriber days, uh, in the history of the Journal since Liberation Day.
So it's, it's good for that part of our business, and that creates inventory and more subscribers, and that's, as a knock-on, sort of generally good for advertising.
We've also seen a lot of brands wanting to get their message across to DC. I think we're seen as a, a trusted source i- in the, the halls of power in DC.
So our sort of DC-targeted advertising has, has kind of taken off in the past few months, and that's not just digital. Ironically, we had a, a, a big resurgence [chuckles] in print advertising tied to, to DC focus.
I think the perception, largely right based off what we know, is that a lot of people in Congress and the potentially the White House- I think it's just because Trump-...
are still reading us in pr- I think people just know Trump- Yeah... that reads the paper. Yeah. Well, you know what? So like, I think that's just it. [laughs] It... Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll take it.
You know, I also think there's... When someone wants to kind of make a sta- Could you target just the papers that go to, like, you know, the White House? That would be like...
Do you just sell it for a million dollars, like, you know? Yeah. No, we can. We do cover wraps for Congress.
[laughs] You know, we, we, we have all sorts of, of opportunities there, all of which have been, you know, well used in, in recent days. But I think, I think, yes, there's, you know...
Some of these folks are still reading print, so it has a, a, a bit of a, you know, Indian summer.
But I also think, you know, when people wanna make a statement, say, "My company believes this," or, "Our group stands for X," or whatever the case may be, putting it in print is a way for them to say, like, "See?
We said it. It's, it's here. It's tangible." It's almost like a PR comms strategy- Yeah... more than an advertising strategy, so. For sure. So yeah.
So the, the combination of the, the surge in, in traffic and new subscribers, the DC-focused advertising, has been a positive for our business across the board.
Now, you know, if tariff uncertainty or other economic uncertainty continues, you might see an impact on ad budgets, et cetera, and that's not, not good- Yeah... for anyone who's selling advertising.
But to date, we haven't- Okay... seen the impact of that in the business. So as long as the volatility is up, down, up, down. If it's, if the volatility- Yeah... is down, down, down, down- Yeah, yeah... then no.
Full-blown recession, not good for the ad business. No. Yeah. Generally not, no matter [laughs] how, how well you're doing. Well, a- But let's talk about the other areas, right?
I'm particularly interested in, you know, your leadership efforts, 'cause I mean, we sort of like joked about it there.
But the reality for every business is you got a small subset of your users that, that create an overwhelming majority of, of, of the value really, you know?
Like, I mean, if you think about the Journal, I mean, Trump is, is one of, you know, four million something. I mean, maybe you comped him. I don't know. He probably broke, drove a bargain.
But, you know, one of [chuckles], one, one of millions of subscribers, but he's, he's a little bit more valuable. He's an important one. Yep. Yeah. He's a, he's a little bit more valuable.
And I think, I think about a lot of these businesses that are consumer, but they're also B2B, right? And in B2B, you know, it's, it's pretty common.
Like, you've got certain people, you know, like my audience are, are really valuable for, for, you know, my partners to, to reach.
I mean, all of the people who read the Rebooting or listen to the podcast are very valuable, but that's the reality. Usually valuable.
And, you know, a lot of the B2B, a lot of standard ad products, just because they're, they're not based that way, you cannot realize that value. You know, a, an impression is an impression is an impression.
But that's why I'm interested in this, in this leadership institute initiative and the councils and whatnot, 'cause that's where you can start to really sep- separate, I don't wanna say the wheat from the chaff, but the like, you know, extreme, like, high-value people in the audience.
Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, to, to your point, you know-You start to talk about four million subscribers to the Journal, y- you got a lot of people in there relatively.
I do think i- it's interesting that the Journal sort of occupies this space, which might be somewhat unique, where it's got a lot of the hallmarks of a B2B trade publication, but it's got the scale of a, you know- Yeah...
general news publication. Well, that's what you want. The, the biggest trade publication in the world- Yeah... or if you wanna look at it that way, which is a great dynamic.
You know, we've got really good data because it is a subscription paywall product, so we can get pretty precise with, you know, even traditional advertising, whether it's, you know, video or, or banners or anything else.
But to your point, you know, there's a subset of that subset that are more valuable to us and more valuable to partners and, and I think the, the executive councils are a manifestation of that.
So, you know, this is a product experience we've had for a number of years, so it's not new per se, but we are coming at it in a new way.
Launching the Leadership Institute under Alan Murray is an investment in the experience for council members, a recognition that, you know, what they want out of this membership is more leadership content, more peer-to-peer interactions, more facilitated workshops, and those are, are products that the WSJ newsroom is not necessarily geared to delivering a- as well as a dedicated team that's just thinking about those specific use cases or need cases.
And so Alan coming on and building out his team, we're already seeing is, is clearly checking more boxes than we were checking before for these groups.
As such, the groups are growing, the feedback is great, and it's something slightly different than delivering them news or even tailored news. It's, it's really facilitating learning.
So, you know, I think we're approaching this product, if you wanna call it that, in a, in a new and frankly better way, or a way that's better suited to what the community's telling us they want. Mm.
But these groups serve a number of purposes for us, and this is back to your question about, you know, how does the Journal, the role of the Journal inside of Dow Jones.
I think these councils, you know, benefit from the, the Journal brand halo certainly. We bring them together.
It's a membership, a business in its own right, so the executives are paying an, an annual membership fee to be part of it, which is not insignificant relative to what, you know, a subscriber pays to get the Journal, obviously.
When we bring them together, we can bring in sponsors and partners, you know, in a, in a elegant way.
It's a high-value small group of people, and so it feeds our sponsorship business, which in turn feeds the sort of broader ad business 'cause of the way that we sort of package these things together for clients.
But it also is a way for us to deepen our relationship with, you know, the most important executives in the world, which is great for some of our other Dow Jones businesses.
So you know, it's, it's, it's a great way to expose this group to some of the other things that we're doing.
We bring in experts from our energy business or our risk business to talk to these executives, and it adds value, but it also is a great way to make them aware of everything Dow Jones can do.
So it, it works for us on a number of levels, and I think, you know, if we were just the Journal, you could still have this business, but, you know, you wouldn't be able to sort of recognize the benefits it might bring to some of the other Dow Jones businesses.
And so thinking about these things a little more holistically has also allowed us to recognize the, the value of them and justify investment in them, and that's what we're seeing this year.
And this is different than, like, an events business. It, it, yeah, I mean, it's, it's... The convening of these councils, whether it's a multi-day summit or a dinner or a, a, you know, half-day workshop, are events.
So it's, you know, they are part of the event portfolio, but our events business is, is broader than just the C-suite council events. Right.
Obviously, we do big industry events around tech and the, you know, food industry and healthcare, et cetera.
So it's a, it's a tranche of our event business, and a somewhat unique one in that it's, you know, just for these members of councils. And, and what happens there is a little different too. It's more off the record.
It's more- Right... workshop and peer, you know, oriented than some of our other, other events that might lean more heavily on the newsroom and big marquee interviews and- Yeah... uh, folks that they bring in, so.
I know it might sound small to, like, there... I mean, maybe it, it is within the context of the overall business, but some of these businesses are very big.
These, like, community businesses, particularly around business executives, like, they get really big. Like [laughs] I mean, there's a lot of- You mean, so like sort of standalone versions of these? Yeah. Yeah.
You know, the border. Yeah. Like, I mean, there's lots of the...
There's, there's, there's plenty of examples of, of these businesses that, you know, that they're very powerful businesses, and I think sometimes, you know, publishing businesses don't really think about that convening role as much as maybe as they should.
No, you're, you're 100% right, and I, I think we were not approaching it necessarily as well as we could have up unto the, the launching of the Leadership Institute, sort of recognizing what they actually want from these communities versus what, say, the Journal is traditionally good at, which is- Right...
you know, call it live journalism. So you know, it may, may have taken us a, some time to come to that realization. I mean, with peer-to-peer learning and that kind of, you know, thing, it's, it's, it's different.
I like these, these kinds of models because, you know, they're using the journalism but not...
I, I always say anytime, like, live journalism and events is mentioned, it, it, it can, it can work, but you, you, you know, usually the events are about something other than live journalism.
That's an ingredient.I think that's right. Yeah, so well, as it relates to the, the, the sort of pure play membership businesses, you know, we've been studying those a lot.
We've brought in a bunch of, of sales talent and, and community curation talent from, you know, the World 50s of the world.
So we're, you know, we're recognizing there's, there's people out there doing these things really well and building big businesses.
And so, you know, that's our ambition with this, is to be a, a- as good as, as any of those pure plays with all of the benefits that we then have because of the journal and some of these other things.
But recognizing it's a unique, you know, a unique business and a unique desire from members that needs to be, you know, dedicated, so to have a dedicated focus on it. Right.
And, and how about the overall sort of events portfolio? I know you're expanding the Tech Live one to the Middle East. That's smart. There's a lot of money in the Middle East. Yeah.
Well, it's a lot of money in the Middle East, but there, there's also a lot of other dynamic things going on. Yeah. Incredibly young population. You know, they're expanding, you know, into new industries.
They're trying to diversify, and so, you know, you've got now some legitimate companies in tech and healthcare that are being built there. So that's, that creates more potential customers for our various products.
It also creates, I think, an imperative to tell a richer story to the rest of the world about what's going on there.
I, I don't think you can sort of get away with covering the, the Middle East, you know, just through a geopolitical or a, you know, fossil fuel lens anymore because you're missing a part of the story.
And so there's a whole host of reasons to, to wanna be over there more. And we've certainly been spending a lot more time there. We're opening new offices.
We're, we're adding personnel, so we see that as a, a growth region. And yes, to your point, our first big event foray is bringing our annual tech conference that we do in California in October to Doha in December.
So we'll, we'll do Tech Live, two different Tech Lives this, this upcoming year, and imagine more to come on that front. But the events business has been incredibly strong this year.
You know, there's, there's so many events out there and, and people are so time poor. I think the, the bar for what you deliver at an event needs to be raised if you wanna compete.
But, you know, so far it's been a growth business for us, you know, matching or exceeding our, our expectations. And like I said, you know, they satisfy a lot of different things.
They are important to justify the membership on the C-suite council side. They're a big sponsorship business. They're great networking for Dow Jones executives.
They're great sort of, sort of story-gathering opportunities for our reporters. So they, they check a lot of boxes and, and, uh, you know, we remain, you know, very bullish on it.
Uh, not just the Middle East expansion, but, you know, we'll do sig- a significant number of new events tied to the C-suite councils, for example- Yes... this coming year, so. And the Journal House.
I hope, I hope to- Yeah... I hope I get an invite to the Journal House. You're, you're always invited. You, you have, you have a job. I'll take you up on that and say that. You can come to, you can come to everything.
I'll have this on my phone, and I'll just play it at- Yeah... some French security. [laughs] That's, that's Thursday. That's what we should get.
We should, we gotta create like, you know, like physical, you know, gold cards or something for people. No, you got a lot of, you got a lot of imitators now. I mean, you guys are early. There's a lot of houses now.
A lot of, a lot of- There's a lot of houses now... a lot of publishers now have houses at these giant events. I'd like think about it as secondhand, but I realize that people don't go to all these events all the time.
Yeah. No. There's- We've, we've, we've done a good job with that. I mean, you know, we're, we're pretty judicious about sort of where it makes sense to do Journal House.
Obviously Davos, which was the OG, is, is still going strong.
Cannes, where we'll be in a few weeks, has been a really great one for the marketing executive community and, as I mentioned to you before when we were chatting, it's gonna be our most, it's our most sponsored Journal House in Cannes ever.
So the, the interest from a sponsorship per- perspective is, is actually growing on that one.
We do a Journal House in New York, which we did for the first time last year, which will now become an annual around UNGA and Climate Week.
And so that takes on a bit of a sort of, you know, energy, energy transition theme and story, and it's a great place to showcase our energy businesses and, you know, it's a flexible platform.
So you've got, you know, council dinners and lunches. You've got newsroom interviews that are on the record. You've got sessions that we'll do just for our Opus energy business, et cetera.
And we're doing, we do Journal House in September in Singapore with a bit of a risk lens, so it becomes a, a, a showcase for our risk and compliance business.
So, you know, there are certain times and places where the construct works, and I think we have more we can bring to the table inside of these than, than ever before. And so that's been- Yeah...
you know, growing like the rest of the events business. So let's talk about AI for a little bit.
Like, and, and let's just leave aside a little the, the editorial stuff, but in your area, because I think a lot of times when we talk about AI and we either talk about like the search stuff, which is real, or talk about, no, we're not gonna use it to write stories.
But there's a lot of things, and we've just been talking for a half hour about this.
There's a lot of things that go on in a publishing company that really aren't related to, to- To, to sort of content creation in that respect... content stories. I hate to tell everyone- Yeah...
but like, that's the ca- the truth of the matter is the majority of people at th- these companies do not actually write stories, and that, that's because there's a lot of things to be done as a publisher.
How do you, where are you guys applying AI?
Because, I mean, obviously it has a lot of impact wh- when it comes to efficiency, and I'm just interested in, in what f- in what functions is it having the greatest impact outside of the editorial? Yeah.
So, so putting aside, you know, how the newsroom is thinking about experimenting with it and the impact on search traffic and what that means for, for our subscription business, et cetera, there are, to your point, a number of, of applications and opportunities on the sort of purely commercial side of things.
You know, one area that we're looking at, which is sort of data intensive and human capital intensive today anyway, is-Sort of the media planning process.
So developing, you know, targeted strategic plans for our advertisers based on the targets and their objectives, you know, the format preference, et cetera, and building a, a tool that would allow us to ingest, you know, years of both RFP data and performance data to create, you know, optimized plans that will be, in the long run, you know, a lot less labor intensive and, uh- Okay, that's a classic thing that could take someone an afternoon or more, or maybe more than one person.
Six... Yeah. More, more than that, and then there's the optimizing of the campaign, which we, we are using some machine learning already on, on sort of real time optimization.
But, you know, we've got a whole team of, of planners that spend a lot of time just constructing these plans, and if we could outsource that part of the job and have them be more client-focused and, you know, proactive versus reactive, I think they could not only be easier to do, but, but more performative and, and, and see better renewals and all the things that you wanna see in advertising.
So that's one obvious area.
You know, we, we mentioned before some of the other Dow Jones businesses, so Factiva, which is the, the tool that ingests about 33,000 news sources from around the world, you know, into a platform that then can be manipulated for a lot of business purposes for our clients, not only are we thinking about sort of AI as a sort of front end, you know, search augmenting tool, but we're actually going through the process now of securing gen AI rights from a lot of those inputting publishers- Mm-hmm...
whom on their own, in some cases, are not big enough to, to have the, the capacity to go and strike their own sort of gen AI deals and how their content gets used in, in different models.
We, in effect, become sort of a clearing house and can convey gen AI rights through Factiva contracts in, in a way that creates, you know, incremental revenue opportunity for us and for the publishers.
So that's a, a, a big initiative.
I mean, look, in the, in the, in the sort of most tactical way, it's not dissimilar from, from the, the, the DC conversation we were having, you know, the AI's been an advertising boom too.
I mean, there's a AI companies that are advertising. There's every professional services company in the world talking about their particular expertise around AI.
So we're, we're seeing, you know, that, that manifest in, in a bit of a surge in advertising.
You know, we're, we're, we're just beginning to experiment with other labor intensive processes like creating beautiful proposals and decks for, for clients that I think could be done faster with AI, so. Yeah.
So when you see all the, the...
When you read all the articles about like, you know, AI and the agentic future, and it seems like it's gonna be doing everything, that I'm like, "Okay, well, I don't know what to do at this point because it seems like it's gonna be doing everything."
[laughs] But do you think like, how do you think that the sales process is going to change? Who are you going to sell to? Are you gonna be s- is your agent gonna be selling to another agent?
Like, I mean, it seems like the ad holding companies are going to, are going to be shrinking, like tremendously. Like, I don't know, like Group M's gonna have a lot of office space from what I hear. Like- Yeah...
a lot of office space is gonna be available. And it, and like so where, how do, how do you think about like what like a publisher, you know, commercial function even looks like in five years?
'Cause I think a lot of times we think about it on, or, or a lot of focus gets, gets put on the, the, the editorial side, but I'm like, wait a second, like what, how is this going to change the sales function? Yeah.
Well I think, I think it will, you know, make more efficient a lot of the stuff that, that gets done, you know, once you understand what a client is looking for and what their business challenge is, and you're looking to solve it, but has to sort of make your case, as it were.
I think that case, you know, once you have proper sort of direction that you've gleaned, I think, through relationships and human contact, you know, it's just like reporting, you know.
And I think what, what Emma's doing with the Journal, and she was doing this, yeah, sort of not in response to AI, but it ends up being, I think, a really good hedge, which is let's focus on stories that are revelatory, that, you know, breaking news, information that no one's heard before.
You know, it's hard for a, a, an LLM to sort of tell you something that isn't yet reported, and so that sort of unique reporting bias that she's given to the newsroom, which I think makes the, the Journal, you know, more valuable in a, in a post-AI era.
You know, you could think about the same, same thing on the commercial side, you know. You're gonna win by getting in and really understanding someone's business challenge, having them willing to tell you what it is.
You know, maybe they haven't even generated a brief yet because, you know, they're still trying to figure it out, and if, if you can get in there early, ask the right questions, you create an opportunity that was sort of heretofore maybe unarticulated, and then, you know, AI could help in the, the building of the case and, and selling that.
But I don't think it takes away the, the necessity for sort of, call it investigative selling, you know? And, and, and, and that's a higher order anyway. So I think, you know, it might change the profile of the team.
You might have fewer kinds of certain roles a- and maybe even, you know, fewer ad sales people, but you'll have better, better ad sales people. Yeah.
Like, if they can't navigate at the C-suite level and, you know, uh, understand a business challenge and how, how we can address it, you know, maybe they're not adding enough value over time.
So I, I think it's not dissimilar from how you might think about a newsroom. Or even like developers, right? I mean, like the 20X developer is like sort of this mythical...
But I would say the 20X developer exists like in most field. There's like, you know, someone...
Most sales teams have s- [laughs] have certain, certain people who are, you know, account for a lot of the sales, like, right?
And like, you know, I think that there is probably ways for-For AI to be used, it'll, it'll never inevitably be used that there, there will be changes to different, you know, roles. And like- Yeah...
you know, just waiting for an RFP and responding to an RFP, I don't know if that's around now or in like five years.
I don't know if that's gonna be- Yeah, no, I mean, that's still part of the business, but to your point, a bit more of a commodified part of the business, and so that, that could change the, where you put your resources.
Yeah. And we were talking a lot about events. Y- you know, th- those in my mind, you know, are like lead gen products that I have.
The goal of these events, given they're B2B events with a very specific discrete known audience, the goal for a, a sponsor is not branding or even sort of thought leadership.
I think that's a precursor, that's a setup for the meetings that come after.
The goal there is getting face-to-face time with customers and potential customers, and if we can deliver that, that's a hugely valuable deliverable, especially given the, the kinds of people we're convening.
And so, you know, I don't see AI replacing that part of our business. Yeah. No, because it becomes, it becomes more consultative by the... It's just a force function, too.
I mean, I always say like, people say, "Well, we've transactional sales, and we wanna be consultative," and everyone always says they wanna be consultative, and like, then a lot of it is transactional. [laughs] Yeah.
But like, this is a force function. Because they don't have the right people, or they don't get the right- Yeah... information. It's 100%.
I mean, the, the other interesting application, I think, in, in our business, as we start to think about Dow Jones customers, and there are a lot of them who buy a lot of advertising, but also subscribe to Saktiva and our risk business and potentially our energy business, you know, we, we wanna be really strategic about identifying high-value customers that have potential for growth across Dow Jones, and we can use AI to do analysis on spend patterns across peer sets and them, and like, you know, have a...
You get that list of who are the most important clients to apply that sort of one Dow Jones- Sure... approach to.
So if someone's like a Journal advertiser, you know, but they also, like, are a target for, like, Opus or something, like, are those, are, are those things linked at all?
I mean, they're part of the same company, but what is the advantage to, like, having that bundle? Yeah.
So to your point, they're, they're often bought from different budget centers inside of a company, and, you know, a CMO might care greatly about the advertising sponsorship opportunities but have nothing to do with, with, with buying the energy data and vice versa.
That said, as you move up the org chart, there are people that care. A CFO cares. A CEO cares. Yeah.
And if you can, you know, find a way to solve a bigger set of the company's problems through Dow Jones products and offer a deal that provides sort of efficiency to consolidate spend with one company, in this case, Dow Jones, there's, there's a win there for, you know, the CFO, the CEO, and they can, they can rally these buying centers to, you know, take another look or look at it in a coordinated way.
We're, we're seeing that happen. So I think you do have to get upstream of your traditional sort of clients for each of these products individually.
This goes back to my point about the value of the CEO council and all of the relationships we build- Yeah...
at that level, and, you know, a, a, a lot of these big Dow Jones enterprise deals started with a CEO to CEO conversation or a, someone like me talking to a CEO at one of these councils and, and understanding what they're, they're trying to do and seeing there, there's sort of a, a missed opportunity on both sides, so.
It's funny, 'cause in the, like, newsletter world, where a lot of people like to, like, pretend that they, like, discovered, like, media or something, but like they, they talk about, like, negative CAC as a new, like, you know, thing, where, you know, instead of, instead of paying for marketing, the marketing i- is, like, a revenue generator, but it also does the marketing job.
And, and like in some ways I'm like, okay, isn't, like, Bloomberg the ultimate like, you know, maybe it hasn't been negative CAC every year, but, like, it is kind of a negative CAC model in that, you know, the media arm, it, it, it just burnishes and helps with the distribution for, you know, the terminal business.
Do you see any sort of similarities in that, like, the Journal becomes almost like a negative CAC for these other businesses that just by their very nature, a, a data business is, is valued far higher than a media business for a reason?
I mean, just- Yeah. Well, look, I think as we've discussed, I think the Journal can accelerate the growth of some of those other businesses.
So in that respect, it's serving some of the purposes you see in these models where the media arm is effectively marketing.
That said, you know, the Journal, and Barons for that matter, you know, are profitable, growing businesses in their own right, you know, serving very distinct purposes.
I, I think it's probably good that we sort of started with the Journal and built on from there versus the other way around. I think the tendency- [laughs] Yeah. Agree...
if you've already got one of these other businesses, you know, you maybe think about media in a more disposable way, but that's not the... I mean, we, we, they're both important.
Finding ways to make them both better, you know, by leveraging the other is, is the, is the charge here. But, but you're right.
Like, you know, Journal House and Can is a great branding for the CMO community, for The Wall Street Journal. Yeah.
But it's also a money maker, you know, some, in, in day one, you know, not even thinking about the long tail deals- Yeah... that might come out of it.
So, you know, we're, we're in the position where we can kind of have both because, you know, our customers are our readers, and so that's a, that's a really, you know, unique place to be in.
I mean, it's sort of not dissimilar from, from your world in many ways. Yeah. Just on a, on a larger scale. Still a little bit li- I don't know if you know that. We could say that with such confidence, Josh. Yeah.
But yeah, probably. That's true. I haven't, I haven't delved into your financials recently. [laughs] Okay. Well, lucky me, not. Well, let's get into the QuickBooks. That's for TRB pro members. Yeah. Okay.
[laughs] Maybe that's something I could offer. I mean, whatever. Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Awesome. That's all I have on my end. Anything else that, that, that we didn't cover that we should have? No, no.
I think, I think we hit the big things. This, it's a, it's an exciting time, exciting time for Dow Jones, exciting time to be in the media business.
I mean, I listen, I'm an avid listener of, of Rebooting podcasts and, you know, you talk a lot about the eras of media and we're entering maybe sort of the post scale era, you know, serving niche customers, and I, I think that all sort of comes back around very much to play to the strengths of the Journal.
You know, we, we, we survived the era where you didn't have to have, you know, 500 million people to make a business and, and the, the world seems to be coming around a bit to, to what the Journal's always done well, which is serve niche audiences- Yeah...
you know, well and deeply. Yeah. Well, I mean, having four million people pay you, a lot of whom have a lot of money, is, is a good place to be generally. I mean, that's a...
You got a lot to work with, I feel like- Yeah... with that, [laughs] so that's good. Yeah. Those, there, there is a lot to work with. It, it, it creates an obligation, Brian. It's, uh- I know...
it's a blessing and an obligation, but no, we're, we're excited about the year ahead and expansion in the fronts that we discussed, including geographically in the Middle East.
I think there's, there's a, there's a lot of, of opportunity even for 100-plus-year-old company like The Wall Street Journal. Absolutely. Awesome. Thanks, Josh, really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Take care. [outro music]