Dow Jones announces new structure

Wednesday, February 22nd 2006, 10:30 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Financial news publisher Dow Jones & Co. announced a new organization Wednesday that will divide the company into three business units, one of which will include the print and online editions of The Wall Street Journal.

It was the first big move by Richard Zannino, the former chief operating officer of Dow Jones who took over as CEO from Peter Kann at the beginning of February. Kann has remained on as chairman.

The overhaul will combine the print and Web editions of The Wall Street Journal for the first time in a new consumer publishing unit, which will also include the financial news Web site MarketWatch, Barron's, and SmartMoney magazine, which is a joint venture with Hearst Corp.

Gordon Crovitz, who had headed up the company's electronic publishing operations, will become the head of the new consumer publishing unit, while Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger will also become responsible for the online editions of the Journal, which had previously been in a separate operating unit.

The revamp will create two other business units at Dow Jones _ a business publishing operation that will house Dow Jones Newswires, the company's various stock market indicators such as the Dow Jones industrial average, and Factiva, a news database that is a joint venture with Reuters Group PLC. That unit will be run by Clare Hart, who had formerly been the head of Factiva.

The third business unit will contain Dow Jones' group of Ottaway community newspapers, an often overlooked but consistently profitable part of the company.

Dow Jones announced the appointment of Zannino as CEO at the beginning of 2006. At that time, Zannino indicated the role of publisher of The Wall Street Journal would likely evolve to include greater responsibility for the paper's growing online operations, which currently have the largest paid subscription base on the Internet.

The previous publisher of the Journal, Karen Elliott House, recently retired. She is married to Kann and had been seen as a candidate for the CEO job.

Dow Jones had previously been organized along methods of distribution _ print publishing, online publishing and community newspapers. The company said the new structure was designed to better serve its financial goals.

The reorganization will result in about 20 jobs being eliminated.