← Channels with Peter Kafka
Channels with Peter Kafka
Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour Explains Why Boring Data Is a Great Media Business
00:46:45
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- [00:02]
Amazon/Mint Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:39]
Almar Latour
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- [02:03]
Almar Latour
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- [02:14]
Peter Kafka
From the Vox Media Podcast network. This is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also Chief correspondent at Business Insider. Thank you to everyone who had nice things to say about the last batch of episodes. Over here, they were all done with people who run things. That's Conde Nast's Roger Lynch, Virsant's Mark Lazarus, Jim Bankoff, who runs the podcast network you are listening to right now and today we have another C Suite interview Almar Latour, the CEO of Dow Jones. Many of you have some idea what Dow Jones is. It's the company that owns the Wall Street Journal. You may also know that it's owned by Rupert Murdoch. But unless you're in the weeds, you probably don't know that Dow Jones makes a lot of money selling stuff beyond the Wall Street Journal, things like risk and compliance, which I have to admit was new to me as well before I prepped for this interview. A lot of that non Journal stuff has been acquired during Elmer Latour's time at the top of Dow Jones, and it looks like it's doing really well. So today I wanted to talk to him about turning a news company into a data company and who pays for that stuff and what that transformation tells us. The traditional news business. As we discuss in this chat, Latour is a former news guy himself. He started out the Journal as an intern, move his way up the ladder and then over to the business side. So he's acutely aware of what goes into reporting and paying for and distributing news and the challenges that business faces today, which we're going to discuss right now. Here's me talking to Dow Jones on Marble Tour. I'm here with Almer Latour. He is the CEO of Dow Jones. Welcome.
- [03:52]
Almar Latour
Great to be here, Peter.
- [03:53]
Peter Kafka
We were just going over our bios and we've been working around each other for many years, but never with each other directly.
- [03:59]
Almar Latour
Yeah, we overlapped, I think.
- [04:00]
Peter Kafka
Well, we won't bore you with my corporate history, but yours is interesting because you are the CEO of Dow Jones. But you started off on the news side. You started off, I think, as a news assistant.
- [04:09]
Almar Latour
That's right. I started out as an intern and then news assistant carrying mail and held a few jobs in between. Probably had four different careers at Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones was a reporter, editor, publisher, and ultimately CEO and publisher.
- [04:27]
Peter Kafka
So you came up through the Wall Street Journal editorial side.
- [04:31]
Almar Latour
Very classic way of growing up there at that time.
- [04:35]
Peter Kafka
Now you're on the business side. I think most people listening to this podcast or anyone who if you say Dow Jones and they have any idea what Dow Jones is, maybe they think of the Dow Jones stock index, but they probably think Wal Street Journal. But that is not the company.
- [04:48]
Almar Latour
It's not the entirety of the company. It's a huge part of the company.
- [04:50]
Peter Kafka
Yeah. So let's just do a level set and explain what the rest of the company is. I was talking to someone who's not at your business. The Other day said why don't they just sell off all that boring stuff? It's not the Journal, but I think that's tremendously important stuff. So you tell me what are the non journal parts of Dow Jones and why do we care about them?
- [05:07]
Almar Latour
Yeah, non journal parts of Dow Jones Barron's massive publication for investors has been growing real media success story. MarketWatch Digital native has been around for 25 years investor business daily. So these are still all, these are
- [05:25]
Peter Kafka
all titles people would have seen, know about.
- [05:29]
Almar Latour
If you move around in the world of investing or business, you will have come across these things with some intensity depending on what your interests are. And so all of them together have well over 6 million paying subscribers. But then we also have Dow Jones Newswires, which is not usually mentioned in one breath with the Wall Street Journal has existed alongside a journal pretty much since its inception 140 years ago. And that produces live news focused on business, has a tremendous customer set. These are professionals. And so there you start straying into the professional world. So you have something that can be traditionally can be called B2C business to consumer. And then you stray into the B2B business to business.
- [06:19]
Peter Kafka
That's where I wanted to get you a big B2B business that people generally don't understand outside the company.
- [06:24]
Almar Latour
Well, our clients very much understand it and there's great demand for it. That part of the business. It has a risk and compliance business. You smirk because it sounds I had
- [06:38]
Peter Kafka
to Google and tell myself what risk and compliance was in advance of this.
- [06:44]
Almar Latour
We'll unpack that in a moment. But effectively it helps companies negate regulatory risk. It also helps companies negate geopolitical risk.
- [06:54]
Peter Kafka
And so we should I sell, should my ship take on this cargo from this person?
- [07:00]
Almar Latour
Absolutely. And so this is where it's all brought together. I'll add one more thing and that is RM Dow Jones Energy, which does energy data, gas prices, but also analytics, all of these things. What connects all of them is they're all, all these businesses that people don't know as well in the consumer world. They all are underpinned by news. They also at Dow Jones have the connection that they, the end customers are effectively all business customers. Right. Even the Wall Street Journal is in many ways if you look at it from the B2B side, it's actually a work tool. And so I call that, and within Dow Jones we call that B2P business to professional. This is what connects all of it. And the whole works together with ever greater intensity. And it is a critical Part of our success.
- [07:51]
Peter Kafka
Yeah. So what I wanted to get to is you've got. You've got some brands and businesses that are B2C, B2P, however you want to call them, people are familiar with. And then you've got these other data products essentially that unless you are again in the ship leasing business or whatever, whoever needs risk and compliance, you'll never see this. You'll never think about it. You sell that, you sell those products for a lot of money. It's a very good business.
- [08:15]
Almar Latour
And this is. It fits together with the Wall Street Journal as well. So let's take a step back. We do news, premium news. We make sure we have proprietary data, we make sure we have analytics, and we make sure that we have convening power bringing these things together. The Wall Street Journal has all of that as well, in its own way. But Energy, for example, started out as a data business. We just hired the foremost energy journalist, I think, in the globe, Andrew Critchlow, to join and to start covering energy with more manpower.
- [08:51]
Peter Kafka
At the Journal or at your energy data business?
- [08:54]
Almar Latour
It's at the energy data business. But it's all part of Emma Tucker's world as well. So all the journalism is connected, and that is a key part of how we can scale up.
- [09:06]
Peter Kafka
You became CEO in 2020.
- [09:08]
Almar Latour
2020.
- [09:09]
Peter Kafka
You've bought a bunch of stuff since then. A lot of those, I think, are these B2B businesses that you've been acquiring.
- [09:14]
Almar Latour
We effectively have two prisms for M and A. One is buying capabilities. We bought a company called A2I that does AI based price forecasting, but that technology can actually be applied throughout all of Dow Jones. Or we buy something that has very specific intellectual property. So data, proprietary data. And so, yes, you're right, IBD is a prosumer.
- [09:43]
Peter Kafka
Business Daily is something that someone might have heard of who listens to the podcast. The rest of the businesses you bought are not. The reason I keep going back to it is you guys are doing very well.
- [09:52]
Almar Latour
We are.
- [09:52]
Peter Kafka
And what I wanted to ask you is how much of the growth of your company has come through these acquisitions in the last few years? How much of your growth trajectory is from stuff that you have acquired since you became CEO.
- [10:03]
Almar Latour
Yeah. So without giving specific percentages, there's been a substantial part of our growth is organic growth, and we've added inorganically, not in substantial profitable businesses. But the growth trajectory is driven and has accelerated by overlaying what we do at Dow Jones. So it's a mix. But the strategy that is driving the Growth and organic growth, even organic growth of the properties that we acquired is what's driving Dow Jones's strength.
- [10:42]
Peter Kafka
And to pull all the way back. I spend a lot of time podcasting and writing about media businesses that are in trouble, that are failing, that are having layoffs. It's in the news today, unfortunately. And when I point to things that are working, the things I think about generally are like the New York Times, which has this giant broad consumer base, and they've added in stuff like games, but still it's a news product. And then you guys, and I always think the Wall Street Journal, and I say, well, that's a professional audience. People generally are expensing that. I mean, they are using it for business reasons. That that's a good business to be in. And then if we look at, there
- [11:21]
Almar Latour
are many people who pay for themselves.
- [11:23]
Peter Kafka
And if you look at Dow Jones, though, a lot of where you're headed and a lot of your energy has been even more sort of specific, sort of narrow casting. We're going to make a specific data product for a very small audience that's going to pay us a lot of money. That's a very good business for us.
- [11:39]
Almar Latour
Yes. And the nuanced difference here is that it's not just data. It's a combination of these things of news, premium news that is very focused. If you combine those two things, you can do forecasting, you can share insights, and so that creates a new business. And then on top of that, something that the Journal has done well and you were involved with, in fact, that is the convening power of bringing people together. And then now we're actually at a stage where we can scale this.
- [12:07]
Peter Kafka
What does the Dow Jones success story tell us about the rest of the media landscape? Again, they're struggling for different reasons, but it seems like unless you have the ability to target a very specific audience that has deep pockets that will pay you a lot for everything you just talked about, you're really going to have a hard time of it. Is there any way you can have a successful news media business that doesn't target really deep pockets like this?
- [12:39]
Almar Latour
Yeah, I do believe that that is an overly negative interpretation of the situation.
- [12:44]
Peter Kafka
Well, you're talking to the right person for a negative interpretation.
- [12:47]
Almar Latour
Well, it's not to deny that every day there are media companies that are failing and that that failure is in some cases accelerating. But I think there is a lesson that is replicable, not instantaneously, but over time. First, you mentioned the New York Times and us in a way I leave it to Meredith to explain her strategy. But the way you described what the Times does, well, they effectively picked a Persona and are selling against that in a thousand different ways. We are doing the same. We picked a focus area and we are selling against that in a thousand different ways. That is, simply put, what we're doing. And so there already you see a pattern. It's not just deep pockets. Yes, it helps that Times readers and our readers have disposable.
- [13:37]
Peter Kafka
And Times also has flipped their business model maybe 10 years ago from being mostly ad supported to now mostly subscriber supported.
- [13:44]
Almar Latour
And we have done that. Wrong with that. Yes, we've done that since the mid-90s. And so we're well familiar with that. We're 80% recurring revenue right now, which is a tremendously good situation to be in. We are recurring revenue.
- [13:55]
Peter Kafka
People are paying you.
- [13:57]
Almar Latour
People are paying us each month or each year. And so that's also a commonality. But your question was, can there be lessons taken from this and can you apply them outward? I think that this type of focus can be applied to local news, aspects of different towns, sports. It can be applied to different strands of entertainment. What is necessary though is to then rebuild businesses, possibly from the ground up and put them together in a different way than before. It's not going to look like the media businesses that we had in the past. You're going to, I think, have to have your own premium news that can be of any sort, so long as you have a kernel of people who are really motivated and really interested in that.
- [14:52]
Peter Kafka
Yeah, we can go back to local news because I know you're interested in that. But it's still the fundamental question of is there a world for businesses that don't have deeply engaged, deep pocketed folks who will pay for that stuff? Is there a world where you could. I mean, that's. Is there a world where you can put together stuff that either has a local focus, now we are talking about local news, or a broad national focus where people. You don't have to pay for it necessarily. It can be ad supported, perhaps.
- [15:21]
Almar Latour
I think the word broad I think is treacherous. What we've seen, even with startups over the past decade or two, they get to a certain point and they are successful generally because they have an identity at the start. Then they get to a certain size, as I'm generalizing, and something dilutive happens because in order to scale from size,
- [15:49]
Peter Kafka
more things to more people.
- [15:50]
Almar Latour
And this is why a lot of media started looking alike. We're the antidote. To that. I think the Times in its way is an antidote to that. But certainly we are. And each part of Dow Jones, each focus area is that too. I think you can in fact start businesses around that. And we're beginning to see a little bit of that. I think Justin, whom you had on the podcast, is doing his version of that.
- [16:19]
Peter Kafka
So it's an events business, a narrow cast at very deep pocketed companies who want to be in front of, who want to be in front of his pretty small group of leaders.
- [16:30]
Almar Latour
But it doesn't only, I think absolutely, as you call it, deep pocketed customers. Those are the ones that if you can, you can serve. But I think it can apply to just people who are interested and who are motivated. And it doesn't have to be an audience of billionaires, an audience of CEOs or an audience of CFOs. That's what works for us as well. Actually. We have a very broad audience that is segmented and has many different audiences within it. And so we are, for example, just starting a franchise on the business of sports. We're starting with convening folks.
- [17:11]
Peter Kafka
Again. Think of the people who are investing in sports, right? It's billionaires in PE funds and then there's orbits around them.
- [17:19]
Almar Latour
That's us. I think at a local level or in a specific industry, you can have people who are customers who are motivated enough to pay up. At least if I weren't doing this job, that's where I would be looking for opportunities right now, in addition to everything that you described.
- [17:35]
Peter Kafka
We'll be right back with Dow Jones Omar Latour. But first, a word from a sponsor.
- [17:42]
Amazon/Mint Mobile Advertiser
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- [18:21]
Almar Latour
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- [18:29]
Almar Latour
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- [18:34]
Peter Kafka
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- [18:38]
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- [18:52]
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comedian, writer and floating head you may
- [18:55]
Almar Latour
or may not have seen on your fyp.
- [18:57]
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And I'm starting a brand new podcast.
- [18:58]
Almar Latour
Wait, Don't Swipe away.
- [18:59]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertiser
It's called that sounds like a lot. I'm gonna start by breaking down whatever
- [19:03]
Almar Latour
insanity is happening in the world and then I'll sit down with a comedian or actor or writer or honestly, anyone who responds to my DMs. This is not the place to get the news, but it is a place to feel a little bit better about it. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podc.
- [19:16]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertiser
That sounds like a lot.
- [19:17]
Almar Latour
Part of the Vox Media Podcast network.
- [19:24]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. Emma Tucker has been at the Journal now what, three years?
- [19:28]
Almar Latour
Three years plus three years on this podcast.
- [19:30]
Peter Kafka
She's justifiably celebrated for the Journal was always very good, but it feels like it's punching up a little more.
- [19:37]
Almar Latour
Or it's punching up its way. I'll take that as a serious compliment.
- [19:41]
Peter Kafka
Yeah. And breaking news all the time. And she is also. And we about talk. I talked about this seemingly intentionally. Well, very intentionally, tried to make the Journal a little more surprising and to cover stuff that you wouldn't normally expect to see covered in the Journal. Sometimes it's salacious or scandalous, but always factual. Factual. But it seems like it is trying to say we would like to reach more people. We're going to change our mix of stories so people who weren't reading the Journal before might want to come to it now. Stuff younger readers might appreciate. And figuring out the balance is hard. But how does sort of. So is she trying to broaden the reach of the Journal? And if so, how does that fit with what we've been talking about?
- [20:32]
Almar Latour
Oh yeah. In a way, we are serving this world of business professionals that is far larger than what we're currently addressing. I think we, Emma and I are totally in sync on this, that our addressable market is far larger than the number of subscribers that we have today. Emma's type of journalism is making it more accessible to folks, but is also making it stickier to people who ultimately come there for core business coverage to help them make decisions. But the more touch points you have with your readers, the more likely they are to stay. The richer our coverage, the more people might be interested in the wall Street Journal, then discover it for what it really is. One thing that has been really important, and Emma also emphasizes this, we cannot forget about the Wall street and the Wall Street Journal. That is core to who we are. And so, yes, we want to have great journalism. Business people are people too, and want to.
- [21:42]
Peter Kafka
They like being entertained.
- [21:44]
Almar Latour
Entertained. And they like seeing the story behind a story. Right. And in a way, the Journal, certainly, when I was growing up as a reporter, definitely paid attention to the story behind the story. And so I think some of the reporters would say this is back to the future in some ways, because there
- [22:04]
Peter Kafka
was an old version of the pre Murdoch version of the Wall Street Journal where there was a lot of sort of like stuff that you wouldn't expect to see in a business publication. The A heads and these long feature stories that weren't necessarily directly about business. They were just great reads.
- [22:19]
Almar Latour
Yeah, I wouldn't define it as pre Murdoch. I would just say there's been a long tradition at the Wall Street Journal to put a spotlight on that. And so that tradition endures. And Emma is accentuating certain parts of that. But Wall Street Journal newsroom also is incredibly serious about all the topics that lead to decisions in boardrooms. And we bite heart there and won't let go.
- [22:43]
Peter Kafka
You guys are doing a lot of AI licensing deals. Some you are doing it. You are doing AI deals. You've done one with OpenAI and Meta. And so the standard question for everyone is if you're selling your data to these LLMs now, aren't you training readers to expect your data somewhere else that's not the Journal or any or other proprietary places?
- [23:06]
Almar Latour
Yeah, AI is so all encompassing right now. And let's break it down. There's really three areas in which it touches my company, I think many others. For us, first and foremost, IP intellectual property. Two parts to that one. Copyright law has to be upheld. If you violated that, we'll come for you. We will not accept thievery. The second part is a more complicated aspect of ip, which is that we're in a period of price discovery where publications like ours, Dow Jones, our business is finding out how much in the world of AI is our data, is our journalism. News is data right now, how much is that worth in a different use case? And so in addition to the deals that you just mentioned, actually a large part of my activity and my team is on bilateral deals with corporations, financial institutions, any industry, hedge funds, smaller businesses, to agree on how they can use our data and our news. And that has added a new dimension to this business. In the past, we might sell a corporate subscription to a bank. Well now that is likely to be, at a minimum, an API will become agentic and we can deliver and narrow cast even more what that specific institution might want.
- [25:01]
Peter Kafka
That makes perfect sense. Right? You are going to sell your data directly to JP Morgan or whatever it is. The bits of information that these companies value will pay you a lot for. They will pay you directly. If you're doing it with an AI company, an intermediary, how do you handle the risk of building that thing up so it eventually becomes a competitor?
- [25:23]
Almar Latour
Yeah, it's a core question for the entire industry. And there's of course a horrific historical precedent of news has to be free. And we've seen the consequences, the devastating consequences for the news media industry.
- [25:36]
Peter Kafka
But even if you're getting paid for it. Right. The idea that if you train me to expect that when I go to ChatGPT, I can get maybe I'm not thinking I'm getting your energy data from there or whatever it is you're selling, eventually I'm getting trained to come to ChatGPT for that information. And you get cut out.
- [25:53]
Almar Latour
Yeah. So without going into specifics of the deals that you mentioned, it's all about guardrails. So you have to understand what can be used, what cannot be used. In many cases, in all cases, these models are only as good as the data that goes into. And so one is about making sure that if our data was used or is being used unduly, we charge for that.
- [26:23]
Peter Kafka
Yeah. Let's assume that they are paying you, they're doing everything correctly, they're using it correctly. You still run the risk of saying chatgpt or name your engine is the place to get all this news. It has most of what I need, I rely on it. Maybe I'm not even thinking about the fact that it's coming from Dao Jones, but that's all in there. And that builds up a counterweight to what you do.
- [26:48]
Almar Latour
Yeah, it's a risk that you have to navigate. How you navigate is where you get the answer to this. Setting clear rules and having technical limits on what goes into the machine is a prerequisite for a successful outcome. There's a. What's also true is that these, we call them third platforms, third party platforms, they will be there, they are attracting millions of readers. And so how can you build a commercially successful relationship with them? We're doing this, for example, with one of our assets that we didn't talk about is Factiva. It's effectively a database of 30,000 different sources. It's a news database. The customers pay for access to that, publishers get royalties. We've recently launched a connector to ChatGPT that allows you to search ChatGPT UX. You have to though, and it happens very fluently, authenticate through us. And you can only pay us in order to activate this on this platform.
- [28:06]
Peter Kafka
So it's available through ChatGPT, but only if I purchase it through you and authenticate it.
- [28:11]
Almar Latour
Yeah, you have to authenticate it through us. And I think it's a part answer to your question. Right, because you raise a really big topic and it's the heart of what will decide whether news media are going to be successful or not, or whether it's going to be a repeat of what we've seen in the past. That authentication is critical, but we are going to have to, as a news media, learn how to live in these new areas. And so if you do not a have an awareness of who your customer is, who you're trying to address, how they're using that information, good news is that it's easier to get visibility on how people are using that information. And then what that use case says about the value of the content that you're creating, what is that actually worth? Now you're having a very different conversation, not just with the platform, but with the, but the thousands, millions of companies ultimately that are using LLMs to run their businesses. That's where my attention goes at this moment.
- [29:16]
Peter Kafka
Is there a world where the primary business of Dow Jones is assembling data that is then ingested by tech platforms? Just call it broadly and that becomes the biggest part of your business. It dwarfs the consumer stuff through the Journal, where you're essentially not writing for machines, but passing data to machines instead of to people.
- [29:37]
Almar Latour
No, I mean it's a salacious metaphor for this conundrum. Who do you sell your data to? Who do you sell your news to? News always needs a customer and you do need to sell it in order to have a viable business. You're focused on the tech platforms, the sale of data and the subscription to data, or to news as data, or just purely to news doesn't only route through the platforms. Perhaps for training purposes, yes, but the core of our data we keep. That's why we call it proprietary. The Wall Street Journal is part of that proprietary news. Proprietary news. And our view of the future is that we're going to deliver that to you whether you're a consumer, whether you're a professional, whether you're a large corporation, whether a hyperscaler, a financial platform, we're going to deliver it to you in a way that you want, sliced in a way that you want, and it will have a UX that you want. This is why I was chuckling a little bit at the way you described it just now. It is not as binary as give everything to tech platforms or nothing. It is a much more nuanced opportunity, I would say, to be able to sell very specific news and information and allow customers, readers, viewers to interact with it on their terms.
- [31:17]
Peter Kafka
We'll be right back, but first, a word from a sponsor.
- [31:21]
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- [31:52]
Almar Latour
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- [31:56]
Almar Latour
Was she brave?
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- [32:03]
Peter Kafka
Did you have to fight a dragon?
- [32:05]
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- [32:08]
Peter Kafka
Was it scary?
- [32:09]
Amazon/Mint Mobile Advertiser
Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be.
- [32:12]
Peter Kafka
Did the car have a sunroof?
- [32:13]
Amazon/Mint Mobile Advertiser
It did, actually.
- [32:14]
Almar Latour
Okay, good story.
- [32:16]
Amazon/Mint Mobile Advertiser
Car buying. You'll want to tell stories about Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
- [32:22]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertiser
Was the biggest cybersecurity risk in America built by software companies? Software manufacturers have been allowed to develop and deliver flawed, defective, insecure software because they've prioritized speed to market and convenience all over security. I'm John Finer. And I'm Jake Sullivan. And we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Jen Easterly, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, joins
- [32:53]
Peter Kafka
us on the podcast.
- [32:54]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertiser
The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:06]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. Let's pull this out of tech for a second. Let's talk about Rupert Murdoch, your honor, who I mentioned.
- [33:10]
Almar Latour
I think in many ways he's synonymous with tech. I mean, he's gone through many.
- [33:15]
Peter Kafka
I don't think he's synonymous with tech. But I once did a cover story about him buying MySpace for Forbes and closely tethered to. He had so little interest in MySpace even at the time. What he was talking about was buying the Wall Street Journal or the Chicago Tribune at the time. Thank you. He's in the news. You cover him as a news subject. You guys just had a really big, important story about him asking Donald Trump for help negotiating with the NFL. A lot of bylines on that big homepage story. When you cover Rupert Murdoch, your owner, when Emma Tucker is covering him at the Journal, do you get flagged? Does someone say, hey, we're writing about the boss?
- [33:56]
Almar Latour
There are super clear rules at the Wall Street Journal that you told us about the. You told me before we started this interview about the code of conduct that you signed back when I was working
- [34:08]
Peter Kafka
at All Things D, which was owned by Dow Jones.
- [34:09]
Almar Latour
Yes, that's right. That's right. We are an independent news organization and we treat the subjects of our coverage as such.
- [34:19]
Peter Kafka
But there's the reality that he's your owner. He also is. He's a news junkie. He loves news. So it's not like he's. He's off in a corner and is barely even aware that the Journal exists. And he is very aware of what the Journal is publishing.
- [34:33]
Almar Latour
The core question is, is there influence or not? And there is no influence.
- [34:36]
Peter Kafka
Well, I guess not so much influence. It's how do you handle it? When you say we're independent company, but we are writing about our owner, there's the natural human stuff. Like we have to get the stuff that much more correct, et cetera. Is there any discussion between you and Emma or anyone else saying, hey, just so we know, do you tell. Well, obviously he know the story's coming. He's been contacted, but I think so.
- [35:01]
Almar Latour
First, there's the traditional path that would be identical to anyone else who gets covered. You get a call from the reporter. The corp comms gets a call from the reporter. Mike, head of comms, gets a call. And so that's the flag. And that's what happens.
- [35:23]
Peter Kafka
Do you hear from him after the flag?
- [35:26]
Almar Latour
I haven't, so certainly not on this particular story. I haven't, frankly, if I think back of any stories, any big stories that involve either News Corp or Dow Jones itself, no related question.
- [35:43]
Peter Kafka
When you guys write a story about Donald Trump that you know he's not going to like, and in this case last fall, you wrote about the Epstein birthday letter, which he said didn't exist, and of course it does exist, and eventually sued you for $10 billion, knowing that Donald Trump and his administration are actively sort of fighting against news media. You know, when you write a story like that, you're going to get at a minimum scrutiny and maybe a lawsuit. What does the discussion like internally when you say this story is coming? We know it is going to poke the bear, disturb the hornet's nest.
- [36:24]
Almar Latour
Yeah, well, this conundrum has existed throughout the history of the Wall Street Journal.
- [36:32]
Peter Kafka
And so there's very different, though, when
- [36:33]
Almar Latour
it's the American president, but it goes back to core principles. And the core principles are lawyers vet the story after editors look at it, make sure that we are on sound terrain and we are confident about our facts. And that's when the decision is made to publish or not to publish a story there yet or not. And so the integrity of that process is unchanged. And that is at the core of how this works. And what's, I suppose, different about it now in that there's a more heated relationship between governments and press worldwide that you have to uphold that even when there is high pressure. And certainly for us at the Wall Street Journal, all we have is the trust of our readers. And so if that in any form is compromised, we can't serve our readers properly.
- [37:39]
Peter Kafka
Describe what it's like to run a News organization in 2026, when the President of the United States might sue you, when the Elon Musks of the world, when rich people seem to be increasingly more aggressive about news coverage and are willing to deploy their resources to steer coverage or to have things not covered. How do you. How do you run an organization in that environment? Because you'll say the trust is important, all that, but there's also just the reality of expense and time and risk involved in reporting things that powerful people don't want reported.
- [38:17]
Almar Latour
Yeah, I go back to how I grew up as a reporter and have the principle of independence be your guide. And I think it's, particularly when you're in choppy terrain, it is even more important to be aware of what your core values are. And so going back to, instead of doing new things, it's actually going back to what are you about? And that is not just a cliche or some sappy journalistic myth for us. This is how we operate. And yes, that can be uncomfortable at times. And yes, when our legal team is facing legal challenges from the outside, that probably looks like it's tense, and I think that's a good guess. But it's the core principles that decide your next step, which Means in our case, means if we believe our stories are factual and we wouldn't publish them unless we believe they have met a certain standard, and that standard is high, we'll defend our reporters and we'll stand by our story. The flip side of that is also true. If we make an error, we have to correct. And so those are two simple principles. They become harder to uphold when there's a lot of pressure because there might be distraction. But that's why you need to go back to what does it mean to be a reporter at the Wall Street Journal? What does the institution of the Wall Street Journal stand for, do you think,
- [39:53]
Peter Kafka
in this environment, the bargain that you say, well, in another world, we might have written this story, it's going to cause us a lot of headaches and it's not the most important story in the world. Maybe we pass on it and we'll save our ammo for stories that mean more that we definitely want to defend.
- [40:13]
Almar Latour
Well, the decision for a story has to be made by our editors and it has to serve our readers. So as is it important to core business? Does it impact society? Does it impact policy? Presumably, if it's important within an industry, within that context, we publish a story.
- [40:37]
Peter Kafka
What do you think happens to the Wall Street Journal when Rupert Murdoch is no longer on this earth? Have you discussed that with him and his son Lachlan?
- [40:49]
Almar Latour
The Wall Street Journal is an institution started as an American institution. Our ambition is to make it a global institution, and certainly that will continue.
- [41:01]
Peter Kafka
Do you think it remains part of the Murdoch family empire or do you think at some point it gets a new owner?
- [41:09]
Almar Latour
I can only act on what I know. We have had tremendous support from ownership from day one. I can speculate on what will happen.
- [41:22]
Peter Kafka
I had to ask you anyway.
- [41:25]
Almar Latour
I appreciate it.
- [41:26]
Peter Kafka
We talked about local news briefly, and this is something you said you're interested in. If you weren't doing what you're doing now, you would be interested in pursuing
- [41:34]
Almar Latour
local news or pursuing very focused news opportunities? I would say. I think that would be. I think an area that over time will have a lot of promise.
- [41:44]
Peter Kafka
So what from your playbook would apply to local news, which seems to be sort of just a market failure, that there aren't enough people in communities who will pay enough to keep a real newspaper, or whatever you call it these days, going. And everything that we've been trying is some either version of not really delivering all the news just a little bit, or it is supported by philanthropy.
- [42:09]
Almar Latour
Yeah, I think there are some. There's some Local newsletters that are paid for. There's a few. And so I think that is one area that can be of interest. It really depends on how you focus within the said topic. It can be on an aspect of a community. It can be combining a couple of communities and write about something that they have in common. It can be writing about business. It can be, and this is being done right now, writing about state regulation that has local impact. And incidentally, AI can play a role with that wherever there is complex information and regulations or you.
- [43:02]
Peter Kafka
Right. So there's definitely. I can imagine a world and I've talked to people who do this stuff, right. They write substacks about what's going on in the state legislature in Indiana and their primary customers are people who work at Pfizer because Pfizer's there and they care about what's going on in the state house. It's not a product for a regular person living in Indiana. It's basically a very specialized product. It's kind of a version of what you're doing. So I can imagine worlds where there are more of those.
- [43:29]
Almar Latour
I think that will proliferate in a way that's a disaggregation of media. Right. You get more specialized publications and maybe things that maybe in the past would have been done by a more general publication to some extent. But you go deeper, I think after that there will be an aggregation again of that and you get a combination
- [43:53]
Peter Kafka
of an unbundling and a rebundling.
- [43:56]
Almar Latour
I think that is always at different speeds happening in different areas of media. But to go back to the opportunity, I think the opportunities and finding what are the narrow cast interests. Also some consumers who might be furfriend sports fans or be interested in local business community being interested in local food. I think the leap that one has to make is that it's not going to be reconstituted as a general interest
- [44:26]
Peter Kafka
newspaper that has sports and business and
- [44:31]
Almar Latour
restaurant reviews, at least not right now. I think this bridge to what maybe will be a new era will be a proliferation of narrow interest. Is that good publications?
- [44:45]
Peter Kafka
Is that good for our society that we've disaggregated news and that we don't have sort of general interest newspapers in local communities.
- [44:53]
Almar Latour
Well, it's better than the alternative by a mile, which is having no news. And it's also better than having the lethargy and the arrogance that media has displayed when it thought it could vegetate on the search model and rely on advertising and clicks. That basically made a lot of media look the same. So I will take this anytime over what we have seen develop and devolve really media into, because in many cases it's driven by passion, it's driven by knowledge. Those are two key ingredients to successful journalists. I think it has a motivated audience and there is demand for it. And so you actually have the ingredients for, in any business, a successful opportunity or a successful formula to meet market demand. I'm not saying that this will happen without pain. We've seen what, three and a half thousand news publications disappear in 15 years. I think 2.6 publications are disappearing every week. I think that will continue. And it's a lot harder to convert certainly unsuccessful businesses into that model because you have a lot of legacy costs,
- [46:32]
Peter Kafka
new businesses that sprout up to serve a market meat. And that is what local news will be.
- [46:38]
Almar Latour
And I'm talking not just about local news. I think local news is one of those aspects, but beyond just local news. It's there for any area that requires deeper knowledge, passion that impacts people's lives. Right.
- [46:57]
Peter Kafka
If we're not. Well, you are more optimistic than I am. So we'll call that glass half full.
- [47:03]
Almar Latour
I am a strategic optimist. I think in my role I have to be. I have to think of solutions to pull the business forward. And you have to have a conviction that these solutions exist and build toward them and try. And you have to be motivated to try. So, yes. So glass a little bit more than half full for me.
- [47:28]
Peter Kafka
Al Marla Tour, thank you for bringing some optimism to me today.
- [47:32]
Almar Latour
So glad to bring that optimism. Thank you for having me.
- [47:34]
Peter Kafka
Thank you. Thanks again, Dalmar Latour. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing a lot of podcasts for me recently.
- [47:42]
Almar Latour
Thank you, Charlotte.
- [47:43]
Peter Kafka
Thanks to our advertisers who bring those podcasts to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening and writing. Go ahead, tell a friend it's free. Doesn't hurt. See you soon.