Dow Jones, the owner of Wall Street Journal, in the person of its chief executive Will Lewis, has recently issued a warning to its rival newspapers. He said newspapers should not "run like headless chickens" just to make deals with tech firms like Google and Facebook.
As a former editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, Lewis is apparently referring to Facebook's Instant Articles partnerships, when he said that such deals presents a risk to newspapers of losing their control of content.
"The issue for us, and I think the broader industry, is do we run headless chicken-like towards offers from companies like Apple and Facebook to put our content in their walled gardens?" said Lewis at a panel discussion under The&Partnership at Cannes Lions.
He also asked the panel if they need to pause and deliberate the situation as partners with regards to the most appropriate manner of looking at these opportunities, and making sure that they don't commit the same mistakes of the past.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is Dow Jones' best known publication. This company also publishes well researched market statistics, several financial publications and the Dow Jones Newswire.
A subsidiary of the company, the Dow Jones Indexes, was bought by the CME Group. Subsequently, Dow Jones concentrated on creating and establishing financial publication, with its flagship publication being The Wall Street Journal.
Company owners are headed by the Bancroft family from the 1920s up to 2007. They held 64 percent of its voting stock. The control of the company was taken over by News Corp through an extended takeover.
Lewis recent comments were apparently prompted by the discussions that he and his company are conducting with the major technology companies regarding content distribution. It seems that Dow Jones is not about to make deals with these tech companies if they will not include a subscription element.
