April 15, 2005 -- The head of The Wall Street Journal's empire, Peter Kann, could be sweating over his job, again.
Earnings plunged by 54 percent at the newspaper's parent Dow Jones & Co., with its fledgling online operations earning more money for the first time than the flagship Journal and the weekly Barron's.
Kann blamed the slump on weak advertising at the Journal, which lost 8 percent of its ads in the first quarter and expects the slump to continue.
...
"They're simply losing market share to other media. Print publishing is not a profitable business for Dow Jones anymore," said Feinseth.
Kann is hoping that the company's long-range growth also comes in online publishing, which has profit margins at least 20-fold higher than print.
I'm sure that online publishing only has proft margins 20-fold higher if the WSJ is simply handing over its content for free.
According to Michael Wolff, while the WSJ Online is generally point to as a great success in that people are actually paying for online subscriptions, it's really hurt the revenue that it receives for the print edition. It isn't because they're losing print subscriptions, it's because by putting themselves behind a wall they've marginalized themselves. It's lost relative influence in the media world, and so advertisers aren't so interested in it anymore.