Wall Street Journal to focus on newswires

Five days after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer moved its etymological in-joke onto the internet, Wall Street Journal journalists are being asked to focus on breaking news over a sister wire service rather than their in print newspaper. That simpler, more concise articles posted over a constantly updated electronic medium have become the economic basis over which WSJ reporters are judged is perhaps a good indicator of journalism’s future.

In the memo, Mr. Thomson [managing editor of The Journal] wrote, “Henceforth, all Journal reporters will be judged, in significant part, by whether they break news for the Newswires.”

The Dow Jones Newswire caters to financial professionals who need constant updates on business news in a simple, quickly digestible format. A similar reformatting for broadsheet stories is being pushed by the News Corporation which owns WSJ.