When News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch speaks, we in the financial publishing world listen, just as fund managers hang on words from Warren Buffett, Bill Gross or Peter Lynch.
And while we don't profess to be The Wall Street Journal, the flashy new publisher of that paper's take on his readers is one worth noting, for it parallels what we aim to achieve here at Money Management Executive.
"A paper servicing the 10% most influential, most affluent, best-educated people in the community on a national basis has a huge opportunity," Murdoch told The Journal in a Q&A last week wryly referencing Murdoch's "MySpace" purchase, titled "His Space."
When asked about his plans for the website, Murdoch answered: "Our website is going to become more and more important, and it will be profitable, too. We are going to have a big, free website, which you might put commodity financial news on-the sort of stuff you get on Yahoo! and so on. But when you get into what we have today, with a lot of analysis and detail, people will pay for that. That is very, very valuable."
We don't want to blanket the entire 200,000-person mutual fund workforce-just the very top executives running the fund complexes, along with the sales, marketing, regulatory and operations and technology people supporting them-with niche, in-depth articles containing details and, when possible, analysis and historical and future perspective.
And that's a powerful readership and advertising base, when you come to think of it. Certainly, it makes our jobs as journalists more interesting. While we will not deny that the mass media reach of CNBC, Time or Barron's is formidable, like The Journal, we aim to provide sophisticated, tailored detail.
And the publishing world overall is certainly far more dynamic these days, with the advances of e-mail blasts, social networking, webinars and videostreaming, as on the website of our sister publication American Banker (check out "ABTV").
So, we welcome your input. If there are topics you'd like to hear more about, or even to weigh in with a letter to the editor of your own, please feel free to reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you.
Contact Lee Barney at elizabeth.barney@sourcemedia.com.
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