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

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From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is channels of Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also chief correspondent at Business Inside. Thank you to everyone who had nice things to say about the last batch of episodes over here. They were all done with people who run things. That's Conde Nass's Roger Lynch. Versence, Mark Lazarus, Jim Bankoff, who runs the podcast network you are listening to right now. And today we have another C-suite interview. Almar Latour, the CEO of Dow Jones.

Great to be here, Peter.

We were just going over our our bios and we've been working around each other for many years but never with each other directly.

Yeah, it was overlapped, I think.

We won't bore everyone with the with with my corporate history, but yours is interesting because you are the CEO of Dow Jones, but you started off on the news side. Uh you started off I think as a news assistant.

That's right. I started out as an intern and then a news assistant carrying mail and uh yep, so held a a few jobs in between. Probably had four different careers at uh Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones uh was a reporter.

So you came up through the Wall Street Journal editorial side.

Very classic.

Class.

Yeah.

Now you're on the business side. I think most people listening to this podcast or anyone who if you say Dow Jones and they have any idea what Dow Jones is, then maybe they think of the Dow Jones uh stock index, but they probably think Wall Street Journal. But that is not the company. It is Yeah, so let's let's just do a level set and explain what the rest of the company is. Um

Yeah, the uh non-journal parts of Dow Jones. Uh Barron's massive publication uh for investors has been growing, a real media success story. Market Watch, s digital native has been around for you know twenty-five years plus.

These are all titles people would have seen, know about it.

move around in the world of investing or business, you will have come across these things with some intensity, depending on what your interests are. And so all of them together have well over six million being subscribers. But then we also have Dow Jones News Wires, which is not usually sort of mentioned in one breath with with the Wall Street Journal, has existed alongside the journal pretty much since its inception, uh one hundred and forty years ago.

That's where I wanted to get. You have a big B to B business that people generally don't understand outside the company.

Well, our clients v very much understand it and there there's there's great demand for it. That that part of the business it has a risk and compliance business.

I had to Google and and and tell myself what risk and compliance was in advance of this.

I and so the uh uh I'll we'll unpack that in a moment. Uh but uh effectively it helps companies negate uh regulatory risk. Uh it also helps companies negate geop geopolitical risk. And so we uh

Should I sell should should my ship take on this cargo from this person?

Absolutely. And and so this is where it's all brought together. I'll add one more thing and that is RM Dow Jones Energy, which does energy data, gas prices, but also analytics, all of these things. What connects all of them is they're all all all these businesses that people don't know as well in the consumer world. They all are underpinning.

And so

I call that and I within Dow Jones we call that B to P, business to professional. This is what connects all of it. And the whole works together with ever greater intensity and it is a critical part of our success.

Yeah, so I what I what what I wanted to get to is you've got you've got some brands and businesses that are B to C, B to P, however you want to call them. People were familiar with And then you've got these other data products essentially that unless you are again in the ship leasing business or whatever, whoever needs risk and compliance, you'll never see this, you'll never think about it. You sell that you sell those products for a lot of money. It's a very good business.

And this is uh it fits together with the Wall Street Journal as well. So just take a step back, we do news, premium news. We make sure we have proprietary data, we make sure we have analytics, and we make sure that we have convening power, bringing these things together. The Wall Street Journal has all of that as well, in its own way. Uh but energy, for example, started out as a data business.

You became a CEO in twenty twenty.

Try, try.

Um you've bought a bunch of stuff since then. A lot of those I think are are these B to B businesses that you've been acquiring.

effectively have two prisms for uh for MA. Uh one is buying capabilities. We bought a company called A2i that does uh AI-based price forecasting, but that technology can actually be applied throughout all of Dow Jones. Or w we buy something that has very specific uh intellectual property. So data, proprietary data. And and so yes, you're right. IBD i is it's a Yeah, yeah.

Business Daily is something that someone might have heard of who listens to the podcast. The rest of the businesses you bought are not. The reason I keep going back to it is you guys are doing very well. We are. And what I wanted to

Yeah. Uh so wit without giving specific percentages. Uh uh there's been uh s substantial part of our growth is organic growth. Um and we've added uh inorganically not in substantial profitable businesses. But the the growth trajectory is driven and is has accelerated by overlaying what we do at Dye Jones. So it's a mix, but the the strategy that is driving the the growth. a and org organic growth, even organic growth of the properties that we acquired, is what's driving Dow Jones' strength.

And to to pull all the way back, I spend a lot of time podcasting and writing about media businesses that are in trouble, that are failing, that are having layoffs. It's in the news today, unfortunately. Um and when I point to things that are working.

There are there are many people who pay for it themselves.

And if you look at Dow Jones though, i a lot of where you're headed and a lot of your energy has been even more Sort of specific, sort of narrow casting. We're going to make a specific data product for a very small audience that's going to pay us a lot of money. That's a very good business.

Yes, and it's the nuance difference here is that it's not just Just data. It's a combination of these things, of of news, premium news that is very focused. If you combine those two things you can do forecasting, you can share insights and so it cr that creates a new business. And then on top of that, and this is a

What is what does the Dow Jones success story tell us about the rest of the media landscape? Again, they're struggling for different reasons, but It seems like unless you have the ability to target a very specific audience that has deep pockets that will pay you a lot for everything you just talked about. You're really gonna h have a hard time of it. Is is there any way you can have a successful media news media business um that doesn't target really deep pockets like this?

Yeah, I I do believe that that is a it's an overly negative interpretation of the situation.

Talking to the right person for a negative interpretation.

Well well, it's not to deny that there every day there are media companies that are failing and that that failure is is uh is in some cases accelerating. But I think there is a lesson that is replicable, not instantaneously but but uh over time. First, you mentioned the New York Times and us.

The Times also has flipped their business model maybe ten years ago from being mostly ad supported to now mostly subscribe.

supporters. And we have done that wrong. Yes, we've done that since the mid nineties and and so we're well familiar with that. We're eighty percent recurring revenue right now, which is a tremendously good situation to be in. We are

Roughly.

But your question was uh Can there be lessons taken from this and can you apply them uh outward? I think that this type of focus can be applied to local news aspects of uh uh different towns sp sports, uh it it can be applied to different strands of entertainment.

Yeah, we can go back to local news um because I know you're interested in that. Um but I still it's still the fundamental question of Is there a world for businesses that don't have deeply engaged, deep pocketed folks who will pay for that stuff. Is there a world where you could I mean that

I think that's a good thing. The the word broad, I think, is treacherous. Aaron Powell What we've seen with even with startups over the past decade or two. They get to a certain point and they they are successful generally because they have an identity at at at the start. Then they get to a certain size, so I'm generalizing. And something dilutive happens because in order to scale from you know size.

Thanks to more people.

Where the antidote through that? Th I think the Times in its way i is is an antidote to that. But certainly we are and each part of Dow Jones, each focus area i is that too. I think you you can, in fact, start businesses around that. And we're beginning to see a little bit of that. I think Justin, whom you had on the podcast, uh uh is is doing his version of that. So it's an events business, but it's

narrow cast at very deep pocketed companies who want to be in front of yeah who wanna be in front of his Pretty small group of of leaders.

But it doesn't only I think absolutely as you call it deep pocketed customers. Uh those are the ones that if you can, you you can serve. But I think it can apply to just people who are interested and who are motivated. And it doesn't have to be Yep. Actually we have a very broad uh audience that has

Think of the people who are investing in sports, right? It's billionaires in PE funds, and then there's orbits around.

But but but th but that's us. I I think at a local level or in a specific industry, uh you can have people who are uh c customers who are motivated enough. to pay up. At least if I weren't doing this job, that's where I would be looking for opportunities right now, in addition to everything that you described.

We'll be right back with Dow Jones Almard La Tour, but first a word from a smile.

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And we're back. Emma Tucker uh's been at the journal now what, three?

Three years plus.

She's been on this podcast. She's justifiably celebrated for for the journal was always very good, but she's it feels like it's punching up a little more or it's

Thank you. I'll take that as a serious compliment.

Yeah, and and breaking news all the time. And she is also and we I talked her about this Inten seemingly intentionally, well very intentionally, um tried to make the journal a little more surprising and to cover stuff that you wouldn't normally expect to see covered in the journal. Sometimes it's salacious or scandalous. Um

But always factual.

Factual but but but I it it it seems like it is trying to say we would like to reach more people. We're going to change our mix of stories so people who weren't reading the journal before might want to come to it now. Stuff younger readers might appreciate. Um and figuring out the balance is hard. But How does how does sort of it so i is she trying to broaden the reach of the journal? And and if so, how does that fit with what we've been talking about?

Oh yeah. Uh in a way uh uh w we are serving this world of business professionals that is far l larger than what we're currently addressing. I think we we Am and I would are totally in sync on this. tha that our addressable market is far larger than the the number of subscribers that we have today. And so Emma's type of journalism is making it more accessible to to to folks, but is also making it stickier to people who come ultimately come there for core business coverage.

They like being entertained.

Uh it w uh entertained and the they like seeing the story behind a story, right? Uh um and And in a way, the journal, certainly when I was growing up as a reporter, definitely paid attention to you know the story behind a story. And so I think, you know, some of the reporters would say this is back to the future in some ways.

Because th there was an old version of the pre Murdoch version of the Wall Street Journal where where there was a lot of sort of like stuff that you wouldn't expect to see in a business publication. Th 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 of Buddhist spotlight on that. And so that tradition endures and Emma is uh accentuating certain parts of that. But the Wall Street Journal newsroom also is incredibly serious about all the topics that uh lead to decisions in boardrooms and and we bite heart there and won't let go.

You guys are doing a lot of AI licensing deals, AI uh open AI some. You are doing it 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 uh now Aren't you training readers to expect your data somewhere else that's not the journal or any or other proprietary places?

Yeah. AI is so all encompassing right now and it l let's break it down. There's really three areas in which it touches uh my company, I think many others. But for us first and for s foremost, IP intellectual property Two two parts to that. One copyright law has to be upheld and uh You have violated that, we'll come for you. Uh we will not accept thievery. The second part is a more complicated uh aspect of IP.

That makes perfect sense, right? You are gonna sell your data directly to JP Morgan. Whatever it is, your the the bits of information that these companies will 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 how do you handle the risk of building that thing up so it eventually becomes a competitor?

Yeah. It's a c core question for the entire industry and there's of course the the uh uh horrific historical precedent of news has to be free uh and and we've seen the consequences, uh the devastating consequences for the news media industry.

Even if you're getting paid for it, right? The idea that if you 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 Chat GPT for that information and you get cut out.

So What y without going into specific uh specifics of the deals that you mentioned, it's all about guardrails. So you have to understand w what can be used, what cannot be used. In many cases these the it in all cases these models are uh only as good as the data that goes into them. One is about making sure that if our data was used or is being used unduly.

Yeah, let's take for let's let's assume that 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 name your engine is the place to get all this news. It has most of what I need. I rely on it. I maybe I'm not even thinking about the fact that it's coming from Dow Jones, but tha that's all in there and that builds up

Yeah. You y y you it it it's a risk that you have to navigate, right?

All right.

And

in how you navigate is w where you get the answer to this. Setting clear rules both and and having uh technical limits on on what goes into the machine uh is a prerequisite for a successful outcome there. What's also true is that these the th we call them third platforms, right? Third party platforms. They they will be there. They are attracting millions of readers. And so how can you build a commercially successful relationship with them? And

So it's it's it's available through ChatGPT, but only if I've authenti only if I purchase it through you and authenticate it.

Yeah, you have to authenticate it through us. And and I think It i it's a part answer to your question, right? Because you you uh you raise a really big topic and it's the heart of what will decide whether news media are gonna be successful or not, or whether it's gonna be a repeat of what we've seen uh in the past. that authentication is is is critical. But we are gonna have to as a as a news media

And then

what that use case says about the value of the 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 with the thousands, millions of companies ultimately that are uh using LLMs to run their businesses. where uh my attention goes at this moment.

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. That it dwarfs the sort of consumer stuff through the journal and and where you're essentially r not writing for machines, but uh passing data to machines instead of to people.

No, I mean it's a this conundrum, who do you sell your your data to, who do you sell your news to? News al always needs a customer and you you do need to sell it in order to have a viable business. Y you're focused on the tech platforms, the sale of of data and the t the subscription to data or to news as data or just purely to news. doesn't only route through the platforms. For perhaps for training purposes, yes. But

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And we're back. Let's pull this out of tech for a second. Let's talk about Rupert Murdoch, your owner who I mentioned.

Well I think in many ways he's synonymous with tech. I mean he has gone through many um.

But but um but I I once did a cover story about him buying MySpace for Forbes and

Closely tethered too.

So little interest in MySpace, even at the time. He's in the news. You you cover him as as a news subject. You guys just had a a really big important story about him asking Donald Trump for help, uh negotiating with the NFL. You 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 does someone say, Hey, we're we're writing about the boss?

Uh there are super clear rules uh uh at the Wall Street Journal that y you you told us about the the uh you told me before we started this interview about the code of conduct that you signed. Uh uh

Back when I was working at All Things D, which was owned by Dr.

Yes. We are an independent news organization. Uh and we treat the subjects of our coverage as such. Um

But there's the reality that he's your owner. He also is he's a news junkie. He loves news. He care so it's not like he's he's off in a corner and is barely even aware that the journal is is exists and it's he didn't is very aware of what the journal is publishing. So

The core question is is is there influence or not? And there is no influence.

Well, i I guess not so much influence, it's how do you handle it when you say, I we're an independent company but we are writing about our owner. Um 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 we do you tell Ru Well, obviously he knows the story's coming, he's been contacted, but

I uh 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 corpcoms gets a call from the reporter, Mike the head of comms is uh uh i i gets a gets a call. And so that's the that's the flag. And and and that's that that that's what happened.

And do you hear from him after the fact?

I haven't so certainly not on this particular story. I haven't frankly on if I think back of any stories uh any big stories that involve the either News Corp or Dow Jones itself. Um no.

related question when you guys write a story about Donald Trump that you know he's not gonna like and in this case uh that last fall you wrote about the Epstein uh birthday letter which he said didn't exist and then of course it does exist.

Yeah. Well this conundrum has existed uh throughout the history of the Wall Street Journal.

Yeah.

But but it it goes it goes back to core principles. Mm-hmm. And the and the core principles are lawyers vet the stor the story after editors look at it. make sure that we are are on sound terrain and we uh we are confident about our facts. And that's when the decision is made to publish or or not to publish a story there yet or not. And and so the integrity of that process

Describe what it's like to run a news organization in 2026 when the President of the United States might sue you, when when the Elon Musks of the world, when when rich people uh are in 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 d how do you

yeah I I I go back to how I grew up as a reporter and uh have the the principle of independence uh be your guide. And I think it's particularly when you're in in choppy terrain, um it it um it it is even more important to be aware of what your core values are. And and so going back to instead of doing new things, it's actually going back to what what are you about? And that's not just a cliche or some sappy journalistic m myth.

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 gonna 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 are are that we should that we definitely wanna uh defend.

Well the 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? Is it imp does it impact society? Does it impac impact policy? Um Presumably if yeah, it's uh 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 is no longer on this earth? Have have you discussed that with him in his son lockland?

The uh the Wall Street Journal is an institution uh Started as an American institution, our ambition is to make it a global institution and certainly that will continue.

You think it remains part of the Murdoch family empire or do you think at some point it gets

A New Honor.

What I I can only act on what I know. We we have had tremendous support from ownership uh uh th from day one. Um I can't speculate on w what will happen.

I had to ask you anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah we talked about local news briefly and y this is something you said you've you're interested in. If you weren't doing what you're doing now you you would you would be interested in in pursuing local news.

Or but pursuing very focused uh news opportunities, I would say. That's I think that would be that's I think an area that over time will have a lot of promise.

What what from your playbook w would apply to local news, which seems to be sort of just a market failure, that there aren't enough people in in communities who will pay enough to keep a real newspaper or whatever you call it these days? um 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 it is supported by philanthropy.

Yeah. local newsletters that are paid for Yeah, there's a few and and so I think that is one area that uh that can be of interest. It really depends on how you focus uh w uh w within the said topic. It can be on an aspect of a community, uh it can be uh combining a couple of communities uh uh and uh write about something that they have in common. It can be writing about business. Uh it can be and this is being done right now, uh

Right. So there's there's definitely I can imagine a world and I I've talked to people who do this stuff, right? They they write substacks about what's going on in the state legislature in Indiana and their primary customers are people who work at Pfizer.

I think that will proliferate and I think and th in a way that's a disaggregation of of of of media, right? You you get more uh s specialized publications and uh maybe s uh 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 um an aggregation again, uh uh o of that and you get a combination of

An unbundling and a rebundle.

Well, I mean I think that that is yeah, always a a different speed ha speeds happening in in in different areas of media. Um To go back to the opportunity, I think the o opportunities and finding w what w what are the narrow cast interests all also so some consumers who might be f f for sports fans or be interested in local business community, being interested in local food. I think The the leap that one has to make is that it's not going to be reconstituted as The Gazette.

it's like Is that a is that good for our society that that we're we we've disaggregated news and that we don't have sort of general interest newspapers in local communities?

Well it's better than the alternative uh by uh a mile, which is uh having no news. And uh it's also better than having the lethargy and the arrogance that media uh has displayed when it thought it could vegetate on the the search model. and rely on advertising and clicks that basically made a lot of media look the same. So I will take this uh any time over what we have seen develop and devolve really uh media into, because in many cases it's driven by passion, it's driven by knowledge.

New businesses that sprout up to server market meet and that is what local news will be.

I think local news is is one of those a aspects. But beyond just local news, it it's there for Any area that requi requires deeper knowledge passion that impacts people people's lives.

Right. We can if if we're not uh 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 be. I I ha I have to think of solutions to pull the business forward.

And

uh y you have to have a conviction that these solutions i exist and build toward them and try and and you have to be motivated to to try. So yes, um so glass uh a little bit more than half full for me.

Al Mar Latour, thank you for bringing some optimism to me today.

So s so glad to bring that optimism. Thank you for having me.

Thanks again to Almoratour. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing a lot of podcasts for me recently. 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.

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