BtoB Media Business - February 2012 - (Page 5)

“Private equity is skittish. They’ve been badly burned over the last three years.” Andrew Goodenough, former CEO of Summit Business Media Page 10 Fenwick leaves Bloomberg to become Dow Jones CEO BY SEAN CALLAHAN Former ABM counsel Straus remembered BY SEAN CALLAHAN News Corp. has named Lex Fenwick CEO of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Fenwick joins Dow Jones after 25 years at Bloomberg, where he served most recently as CEO of Bloomberg Ventures. He succeeds Les Hinton, who left the company in July amid the News Corp. phone hacking scandal. Fenwick will be based in New York and report to Chase Carey, president-COO of News Corp. “We have clearly established WSJ as the premium consumer newspaper, and we are thrilled that Lex will be driving our plans to grow all our Dow Jones franchises into true innovative market leaders for today’s digital world,” Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman-CEO, said in a statement. “We believe our enterprise business has the potential to follow the brand’s success in the consumer space, and be the premier product in providing the kind of hard-to-find, premium content that the financial customer demands. We are committed to making it happen, and we think Lex is the executive to get us there.” Ken Doctor, affiliate analyst for Oustell Inc., said the hiring of Fenwick is another strategic move in the ongoing battle between Dow Jones, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters for business news supremacy. These three companies are among the main competitors in a continuum of business information that stretches from advertising-supported consumer business news to premium subscription products. In this business information struggle, Dow Jones is a leader in consumer business information with its Wall Street Journal Digital AGENDA FEB. 26-28 Network, which includes AllThingsD, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com and WSJ.com. With its revitalization of Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg has made a big move to bolster its position in advertising-supported consumer business information. Bloomberg, with its terminals business, is a dominant player in the subscription business information sector. By hiring Fenwick, with his Bloomberg background, Dow Jones is looking to strengthen the position of its Factiva business and other b-to-b offerings, such as Dow Jones Newswires, Doctor said. “He may be being brought in to see where does Factiva fit into Dow Jones in the long term,” he said. Others have speculated that the hiring of Fenwick, who is not a News Corp. insider, is a means of distancing the company from the phone hacking scandal in the U.K. In a statement, Fenwick said: “I’m honored and excited to join Dow Jones at such a transformational time. The people, brands and franchises give us a wonderful opportunity to grow and develop new elements that we hope will reap rewards in the future. Over 25 years at Bloomberg I have made many friends, learned an enormous amount, witnessed wonderful success and—above all else—experienced incredible loyalty. I am proud of what we built together.” “Having had great success in his previous incarnation, Lex has a sense of the enormous potential of Dow Jones and the people of Dow Jones,” Robert Thomson, editor in chief of Dow Jones, said in a statement about Fenwick. “He has a genuine feel for the character of contemporary content and its value, and this instinct and insight and drive will be the stuff of our future prosperity.” MARCH 20 IAB Annual Leadership Meeting Interactive Advertising Bureau Fontainebleau, Miami Beach, Fla. www.iab.net ‘BtoB’s’ Digital Edge Live BtoB Hotel Nikko, San Francisco www.btobonline.com/conference MARCH 16 MARCH 21-23 Jesse H. Neal Awards American Business Media Mandarin Oriental Hotel, New York www.americanbusinessmedia.com Custom Content Conference Custom Content Council Hotel Monaco, Washington, D.C. www.customcontentcouncil.com David Straus, American Business Media’s former Washington counsel, died Jan. 15 after a long battle with cancer. He was 66 years old. Straus, who was a partner at law firm Thompson Coburn, was instrumental in fighting several winning battles against the Postal Rate Commission that helped hold down postal rates for bto-b media companies. He also helped lobby Straus for the CAN-SPAM Act. “He did so much for our industry; it’s remarkable,” said Gordon Hughes, former president-CEO of ABM. Hughes continued: “I knew David for 16 years, and he was much more than an attorney to me. If I had to encapsulate him and his intellect and his capabilities as an attorney, I’d say if you saw him cross-examine someone, he could extract your teeth. “He was just unbelievable in the courtroom. He could have been Perry Mason, but he did it with grace and he did it with humor.” Keith Crain, chairman of Crain Communications Inc., which publishes Media Business, knew Straus well from his work with ABM’s committee on Washington and legal affairs. “David Straus was a wonderful individual and, more than that, knew more about postal regulations than anyone I ever met,” Crain said. “He was funny, sarcastic, witty and smart as a whip.” Hughes said that in ABM’s squabbles with the MPA over postal rates, Straus more than held his own against teams of lawyers on the other side. “He was literally David and they were Goliath,” Hughes said. mediabusinessonline.com | February 2012 | Media Business | 5 http://www.barrons.com http://www.barrons.com http://www.Marketwatch.com http://www.WSJ.com http://www.iab.net http://www.btobonline.com/conference http://www.americanbusinessmedia.com http://www.customcontentcouncil.com http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - February 2012

BtoB Media Business - February 2012
Contents
‘Economist’ drives revenue with social, mobile
B-to-b media sector growing, despite threats
This year likely to be one of transition in M&A
Sales & Marketing
Audience Development
Events
Production
People
Benchmarks
What digital media could tell Washington

BtoB Media Business - February 2012