Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour Explains Why Boring Data Is a Great Media Business

22:01That is core to who we are. And so, yes, we want to have great journalism. Business people are people, too, and want to— They like being entertained. Entertained, and they like seeing the story behind the story, right? And in a way, the journal, certainly when I was growing up as a reporter, definitely paid attention to the story behind the story. And so I think some of the reporters would say this is back to the future in some ways.

22:33Peter Kafka:Because there was an old version of the pre-Murdoch version of the Wall Street Journal where there was a lot of sort of like stuff that you wouldn't expect to see in a business publication. The A-heads and these long feature stories that weren't necessarily directly about business. They were just great reads. Yeah, I wouldn't define it as pre-Murdoch. I would just say there's been a long tradition at the Wall Street Journal to put a spotlight on that. And so that tradition endures. And Emma is accentuating certain parts of that. But the Wall Street Journal newsroom also is incredibly serious about all the topics that lead to decisions in boardrooms.

23:10And we bite hard there and won't let go.

23:13Peter Kafka:You guys are doing a lot of AI licensing deals, AI, OpenAI, some. You are doing AI deals. You've done one with OpenAI and Meta. And so the standard question for everyone is, if you're selling your data to these LLMs now, aren't you training readers to expect your data somewhere else that's not the journal or any other proprietary places? Yeah. AI is so all-encompassing right now. And let's break it down. There's really three areas in which it touches my company and I think many others. But for us, first and foremost, IP, intellectual property, two parts to that. One, copyright law has to be upheld, and if you violated that, we'll come for you.

24:07We will not accept thievery. The second part is a more complicated aspect of IP, which is that we're in a period of price discovery where publications like ours, Dow Jones, our business, is finding out how much in the world of AI is our data, is our journalism, news is data right now, how much is that worth in a different use case? And so, in addition to the deals that you just mentioned, actually, a large part of my activity and my team is on bilateral deals with corporations and financial institutions, any industry, hedge funds, smaller businesses, to agree on how they can use our data and our news.

25:04And that has added a new dimension to this business. In the past, we might sell a corporate subscription to a bank, right? Well, now that is likely to be at a minimum an API will become agentic. And we can deliver a narrow cast even more what that specific institution might want.

25:31Peter Kafka:That makes perfect sense, right? You are going to sell your data directly to - J.P. Morgan. Yeah. Whatever it is, the bits of information that these companies value will pay you a lot for. They'll pay you directly. If you're doing it with an AI company, an intermediary, how do you handle the risk of building that thing up so it eventually becomes a competitor? Yeah. It's a core question for the entire industry. And there's, of course, the horrific historical precedent of news has to be free. and we've seen the consequences, the devastating consequences for the news media industry. But even if you're getting paid for it, right, the idea that if you train me to expect that when I go to ChatGPT, I can get, maybe I'm not thinking I'm getting your energy data from there or whatever it is you're selling, eventually I'm getting trained to come to ChatGPT for that information and you get cut out.

26:23Yeah. So without going into specifics of the deals that you mentioned, it's all about guardrails. So you have to understand what can be used, what cannot be used. In many cases, these – in all cases, these models are only as good as the data that goes into. And so one is about making sure that if our data was used or is being used unduly, we charge for that.

26:53Peter Kafka:Yeah, let's take – let's assume that they are paying you. They're doing everything correctly. They're using it correctly. you still run the risk of saying chat GPT or name your engine is the place to get all this news. It has most of what I need. I rely on it. Maybe I'm not even thinking about the fact that it's coming from Dow Jones, but that's all in there. And that builds up a counterweight to what you do. It's a risk that you have to navigate, right? And how you navigate is where you get the answer to this. Setting clear rules and having technical limits on what goes into the machine is a prerequisite for a successful outcome there.

27:40What's also true is that these, we call them third platforms, third-party platforms, they will be there. They are attracting millions of readers. And so how can you build a commercially successful relationship with them? And we're doing this, for example, with one of our assets that we didn't talk about is Factiva. It's effectively a database of 30 ,000 different sources. It's a news database. Customers pay for access to that. Publishers get royalties. We have recently launched a connector to ChatGPT that allows you to search ChatGPT UX. You have to, though, and this happens very fluently, authenticate through us.

28:31And you can only pay us in order to activate this on this platform.

28:35Peter Kafka:So it's available through ChatGPT, but only if I've purchased it through you and authenticated it. Yeah, you have to authenticate it through us. And I think it's a part answer to your question, right? Because you raise a really big topic and it's the heart of what will decide whether news media are going to be successful or not or whether it's going to be a repeat of what we've seen in the past. That authentication is critical. But we are going to have to, as a news media, learn how to live in these new areas. And so if you do not, A, have an awareness of who your customer is, who you're trying to address, how they're using that information, good news is that it's easier to get visibility on how people are using that information.

29:25And then what that use case says about the value of the content that you're creating, what is that actually worth? Now you're having a very different conversation, not just with the platform, but with the thousands, millions of companies ultimately that are using LLMs to run their businesses. That's where my attention goes at this moment.

29:45Peter Kafka:Is there a world where the primary business of Dow Jones is assembling data that is then ingested by tech platforms, just call it broadly, and that becomes the biggest part of your business? It dwarfs the sort of consumer stuff through the journal where you're essentially not writing for machines but passing data to machines instead of to people. No, I mean, it's a salacious metaphor for this conundrum. Who do you sell your data to? Who do you sell your news to? News always needs a customer, and you do need to sell it in order to have a viable business. You're focused on the tech platforms, the sale of data and the subscription to data or to news as data or just purely to news doesn't only route through the platforms.

30:40For perhaps for training purposes, yes, but the core of our data we keep. That's why we call it proprietary. The Wall Street Journal is part of that proprietary data. It's proprietary news. And our view of the future is that we're going to deliver that to you, whether you're a consumer, whether you're a professional, whether you're a large corporation, whether a hyperscaler, a financial platform. We're going to deliver it to you in a way that you want, sliced in a way that you want. And it will have a UX that you want. And so it is not, this is why I was juggling a little bit at the way you described it just now.

31:20It is not as binary as give everything to tech platforms or nothing. It is a much more nuanced opportunity, I would say, to be able to sell very specific news and information and allow customers, readers, viewers to interact with it on their terms. We'll be right back, but first a word from a sponsor. Was the biggest cybersecurity risk in America built by software companies? Software manufacturers have been allowed to develop and deliver flawed, defective, insecure software because they've prioritized speed to market and convenience all over security. I'm Jon Feiner. And I'm Jake Sullivan. And we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast.

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33:14Peter Kafka:And we're back. Let's pull this out of tech for a second. Let's talk about Rupert Murdoch, who I mentioned. Well, I think in many ways, he's synonymous with tech. I mean, he's gone through many directions. I don't think he's anonymous. But I once did a cover story about him buying MySpace for Forbes. He's closely tethered to – He had so little interest in MySpace even at the time. What he was talking about was buying the Wall Street Journal or the Chicago Tribune at the time. Thank you. He's in the news. You cover him as a news subject. You guys just had a really big, important story about him asking Donald Trump for help, negotiating with the NFL.

33:51Peter Kafka:Well, you have a lot of bylines on that big homepage story. When you cover Rupert Murdoch, your owner, when Emma Tucker is covering him at the Journal, do you get flagged? Does someone say, hey, we're writing about the boss? There are super clear rules at the Wall Street Journal that you told us about. You told me before we started this interview about the code of conduct that you signed. Back when I was working at All Things D, which was owned by Dow Jones. That's right. That's right. We are an independent news organization. and we treat the subjects of our coverage as such. But there's the reality that he's your owner.

34:30Peter Kafka:He also is a news junkie. He loves news. So it's not like he's off in a corner and is barely even aware that the journal exists. He is very aware of what the journal is publishing. Yeah. But the core question is, is there influence or not? And there is no influence. Well, I guess not so much influence. It's how do you handle it when you say we're an independent company, but we are writing about our owner. There's the natural human stuff, like we have to get the stuff that much more correct, et cetera. Is there any discussion between you and Emma or anyone else saying, hey, just so we know, do you tell – well, obviously he knows the story is coming.

35:06Peter Kafka:He's been contacted. I think – so first, there's the traditional path that would be identical to anyone else who gets covered. You get a call from the reporter. The corp comms gets a call from the reporter. My head of comms gets a call. And so that's the flag. And that's what happens. And do you hear from him after the fact? I haven't. So certainly not on this particular story. I haven't, frankly, if I think back of any stories, stories, any big stories that involve either News Corp or Dow Jones itself. No. Trevor Burrus Related question. When you guys write a story about Donald Trump that you know he's not going to like, and in this case, last fall you wrote about the Epstein birthday letter, which he said didn't exist, and of course it does exist, and eventually sued you for$10 billion.

36:06Peter Kafka:dollars. Knowing that Donald Trump and his administration are actively sort of fighting against news media, you know when you write a story like that, you're going to get at a minimum scrutiny and maybe a lawsuit. What is the discussion like internally when you say, this story is coming, we know it is going to, you know, poke the bear, disturb the hornet's nest? Yeah. Well, this conundrum has existed throughout the history of the Wall Street Journal. But this is very different, though, when it's the American president. But it goes back to core principles. And the core principles are lawyers vet the story after editors look at it, make sure that we are on sound terrain, and we are confident about our facts.

37:02And that's when the decision is made to publish or not to publish a story there yet or not. And so the integrity of that process is unchanged, and that is at the core of how this works. And what's, I suppose, different about it now and that there's a more heated relationship between governments and press worldwide, that you have to uphold that even when there is high pressure. And certainly for us at The Wall Street Journal, all we have is the trust of our readers. And so if that in any form is compromised, we can't serve our readers properly.

37:47Peter Kafka:Describe what it's like to run a news organization in 2026 when the president of the United States might sue you, when the Elon Musks of the world, when rich people seem to be increasingly more aggressive about news coverage and are willing to deploy their resources to steer coverage or to have things not covered. How do you run an organization in that environment? As you say, the trust is important and all that, but there's also just the reality of expense and time and risk involved in reporting things that powerful people don't want reported. Yeah. I go back to how I grew up as a reporter and have the principle of independence be your guide.

38:36And I think it's particularly when you're in choppy terrain, it is even more important to be aware of what your core values are. And so going back to – instead of doing new things, it's actually going back to what are you about? And that is not just a cliche or some sappy journalistic myth. For us, this is how we operate. And yes, that can be uncomfortable at times. And yes, when our legal team is facing legal challenges from the outside, it probably looks like it's tense. And I think that's a good guess, but it's the core principles that decide your next step. which means, in our case, means if we believe our stories are factual and we wouldn't publish them unless we believe they have met a certain standard and that standard is high, we'll defend our reporters and we'll stand by our story.

39:40The flip side of that is also true. If we make an error, we have to correct. And so those are two simple principles. They become harder to uphold when there's a lot of pressure because there might be distraction, But that's why you need to go back to what does it mean to be a reporter at the Wall Street Journal? What does the institution of the Wall Street Journal stand for?

40:01Peter Kafka:Do you think in this environment the bar gets raised that you say, well, in another world we might have written this story. It's going to cause us a lot of headaches and it's not the most important story in the world. Maybe we pass on it and we'll save our ammo for stories that mean more that we definitely want to defend. Well, the decision for a story has to be made by our editors and it has to serve our readers. So is it important to core business? Does it impact society? Does it impact policy? Presumably, if it's important within an industry, within that context, we publish a story. What do you think happens to the Wall Street Journal when Rupert Murdoch is no longer on this earth?

40:51Peter Kafka:Have you discussed that with him and his son Laughlin? Well, the Wall Street Journal is an institution. Started as an American institution. Our ambition is to make it a global institution, and certainly that will continue. Do you think it remains part of the Murdoch family empire, or do you think at some point it gets a new owner? I can only act on what I know. We have had tremendous support from ownership from day one. I can't speculate on what will happen. I had to ask you anyway. I appreciate it. We talked about local news briefly, and this is something you said you're interested in. If you weren't doing what you're doing now, you would be interested in pursuing local news.

41:43Or pursuing very focused news opportunities, I would say. I think that would be, I think, an area that over time will have a lot of promise.

41:52Peter Kafka:So what from your playbook would apply to local news, which seems to be sort of just a market failure, that there aren't enough people in communities who will pay enough to keep a real newspaper or whatever you call it these days going? And everything that we've been trying is some either version of not really delivering all the news just a little bit or it is supported by philanthropy. Yeah, I think there are some local newsletters that are paid for. There's a few. There's a few. And so I think that is one area that can be of interest. It really depends on how you focus within the said topic.

42:36It can be on an aspect of a community. It can be combining a couple of communities and write about something that they have in common. It can be writing about business. It can be, and this is being done right now, writing about state regulation that has local impact. And incidentally, AI can play a role with that wherever there is complex information and regulations. Right.

43:10Peter Kafka:So there's definitely, I can imagine a world, and I've talked to people who do this stuff, right? They write sub-stacks about what's going on in the state legislature in Indiana, and their primary customers are people who work at Pfizer because Pfizer is there and they care about what's going on in the statehouse. It's not a product for a regular person living in Indiana. It's basically a very specialized product. It's kind of a version of what you're doing. So I can imagine worlds where there are more of those. I think that will proliferate. And I think in a way, that's a disaggregation of media, right?

43:44You get more specialized publications and maybe things that maybe in the past would have been done by a more general publication to some extent, but you go deeper. I think after that, there will be an aggregation again of that and you get a combination of - An unbundling and a rebundling. I think that is always at different speeds happening in different areas of media. But to go back to the opportunity, I think the opportunity is in finding what are the narrow cast interests. Also, some consumers who might be Furfin sports fans or be interested in local business community being interested in local food.

44:28I think the leap that one has to make is that it's not going to be reconstituted as a general interest newspaper that has sports and business and restaurant reviews. At least not right now. I think to this bridge to what maybe will be a new era will be a proliferation of narrow interest publication.

44:53Peter Kafka:Is that good for our society that we've disaggregated news and that we don't have a sort of general interest newspapers in local communities? Well, it's better than the alternative by a mile, which is having no news. And it's also better than having the lethargy and the arrogance that media has displayed when it thought it could vegetate on the search model and rely on advertising and clicks that basically made a lot of media look the same. So, I will take this anytime over what we have seen develop and devolve, really, media into because in many cases, it's driven by passion. It's driven by knowledge.

45:46Those are two key ingredients to successful journalists, I think. It has a motivated audience. And there is demand for it. And so you actually have the ingredients for, in any business, a successful opportunity or a successful formula to meet market demand. And so I'm not saying that this will happen without pain. We've seen, what, 3 ,500 news publications disappear in 15 years. I think 2.6 publications are disappearing every week. So I think that will continue. And it's a lot harder to convert certainly unsuccessful businesses into that model because you have a lot of legacy costs. New businesses that sprout up to serve a market meet, and that is what local news will be.

46:45And I'm talking not just about local news. I think local news is one of those aspects. But beyond just local news, it's there for any area that requires deeper knowledge, passion that impacts people's lives, right?

47:05Peter Kafka:We can – if we're not – well, you are more optimistic than I am, so we'll call that glass half full. I am a strategic optimist. I think in my role, I have to think of solutions to pull the business forward. And you have to have a conviction that these solutions exist and build toward them and try. And you have to be motivated to try. So, yes. So, Glass, a little bit more than half full for me. Almar Latour, thank you for bringing some optimism to me today. So glad to bring that optimism. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thanks again, Dalmore Latour. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing a lot of podcasts for me recently.

47:50Peter Kafka:Thank you, Charlotte. Thanks to our advertisers who bring those podcasts to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening and writing. Go ahead, tell a friend. It's free. It doesn't hurt. See you soon.