For-Pay The Key To New Media Success, says WSJ editor

While many blame traditional journalism's precarious state on the encroachment of new media, Robert Thomson, the Wall Street Journal's managing editor, says he believes members of newsrooms' old school are also part of the problem. "Far too many journalists have failed to respond with flare and creativity to the extraordinary opportunities provided," Thomson, who also serves as Dow Jones & Co. editor-in-chief, said Tuesday. Speaking at a Federal Trade Commission workshop on journalism's future, Thomson said that part of journalism's survival is incumbent on news professionals, particularly newspaper employees, to adapt to audiences' new habits and demands. The uncertain future of newspapers, he said, reflects years of journalists who, in the face of changing media, showed an "inability to understand how fundamentally the life of the reader has changed." Instead of capitalizing on — and, more specifically, monetizing — new media opportunities as they emerged, traditional journalists set the stage for pending doom by being lackadaisical instead of hungry, he said.