Inside the Wall Street Journal Web Site
By Christopher Elliott
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition's publisher is no stranger to cyberspace. Dow Jones & Co. news services have been a trading-floor institution for decades, delivering real-time news and up-to-the-minute information to investors.
Its new Interactive Edition was envisioned as a kind of commercial online service, too—until the Web began rendering the closed systems obsolete earlier this year. As the likes of CompuServe and AT&T jumped to the Web, so did the Journal.
Editor Neil Budde has guided the project through several incarnations, starting with a rough draft he scripted in Visual Basic, and ending up with what he's described as a "more or less" Netscape 2.0-compatible HTML site. In August, the Interactive Journal became one of the first electronic versions of a national daily newspaper to begin charging for subscriptions.
Backed by an editorial staff of 35 and enough hardware to turn any Webmaster a shade of green, Budde has helped create one of the Internet's sharpest—and potentially most profitable—sites. Web Techniques contributor Christopher Elliott recently spoke with Budde in New York.
What is the Interactive Journal?
If you think of us as an online newspaper, you miss out on a lot. In the beginning, people wanted to call us "The Wall Street Journal On-line." We thought that would be a mistake because it wouldn't suggest all the power and depth behind the product.
Calling us the Interactive Journal is great from a marketing perspective, but it's also a two-edged sword.
