Dow Jones & Company, Inc. - Information Services -  Category Directory

(212) 416-2000

200 Liberty Street

New York, NY 10281
www.dj.com
 

Sales

$1.5 billion

Business Description 
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (the Company) is a global provider of business and financial news and information through newspapers, newswires, magazines, the Internet, television and radio stations. In addition, the Company owns certain general-interest community newspapers throughout the U.S.

The Company has determined the following three reportable segments based on the manner in which it manages its business: print publishing, electronic publishing and general-interest community newspapers. In addition, the Company reports certain administrative activities under the corporate segment. Financial information about operating segments and geographic areas is incorporated by reference to Note 14 to the Financial Statements of this report.

The Company’s principal executive offices are located at 200 Liberty Street, New York, New York, 10281.

The Company makes available all of its annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to such reports free of charge through its Internet Web site at www.dowjones.com. These reports are also available on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Internet Web site at www.sec.gov.

EMPLOYEES

At December 31, 2003, the Company employed 6,975 full-time employees compared with 6,816 full-time employees at December 31, 2002 and 8,077 at December 31, 2001. The reduction in full-time employees from 2001 was largely the result of workforce reductions in 2002 and 2001.

PRINT PUBLISHING

Print publishing, which is largely comprised of the global operations of The Wall Street Journal, produces business and financial content worldwide. This content is published primarily in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America editions of The Wall Street Journal and in U.S. television through a licensing arrangement with CNBC. The editions in the print publishing segment utilize a global management structure with shared news flows and workforce and a global advertising customer base and pricing. U.S. television, which represents a licensing agreement with NBC to provide branding, news content and on-air expertise to CNBC, is a further extension of the Journal brand and the content it produces. Results of the Company’s international television operations are included in equity in earnings (losses) of associated companies.

The Company’s overall performance is largely dependent on the operating performance of the global Wall Street Journal (including its extended U.S. television brand and content). Print publishing revenues and profits are largely dependent on B2B advertising revenue, particularly from the Company’s core financial and technology sectors, which have been depressed from their cyclically high levels in 2000. Advertising volume began to recover in the second half of 2003 but is still below what the Company considers to be normal levels. Revenues of this segment comprise approximately 60% of total Company revenues.

U.S. Publications

The Wall Street Journal, the Company’s flagship publication, is one of the country’s largest daily newspapers with average print circulation of 1,792,000 in 2003. The Journal’s three major national editions are printed at 17 printing plants located throughout the U.S. The Journal also sells regional advertising in 18 regional editions.

The Wall Street Journal has an overall daily print capacity of 96 pages, including 24 pages of color. The Journal includes special sections such as The Personal Journal (“business of life”) section which launched in 2002 and runs every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and the Weekend Journal section, which runs each Friday and includes pages devoted to travel, wine, sports, shopping, residential real estate and the arts. The Journal also publishes special reports at various times of the year on topics such as technology, personal finance and executive compensation, e-commerce, health and medicine as well as demographically targeted sections devoted to subjects of retirement and small business.

The Journal reaches additional readers through Wall Street Journal Sunday, which focuses on personal finance and careers and is published once a week in the business sections of metropolitan newspapers with combined circulation of about 10.6 million. These branded pages now appear in the Sunday business section of more than 80 community newspapers.

The Journal production process employs electronic pagination and satellite transmission of page images to outlying plants as well as other technologies designed to speed transmission of news and editorial material to printing plants that enables earlier delivery of fresher content to our readers.

The Wall Street Journal is delivered principally in three ways. Each business day, approximately 130,000 copies of the Journal are sold at newsstands. Most home and office subscription deliveries are handled through the Company’s National Delivery Service, Inc. subsidiary. In 2003, the National Delivery Service, which provides early morning delivery, on average delivered about 1.3 million, or 81%, of the Journal’s subscription copies each publishing day. The balance of the Journal’s home and office deliveries is made by second class postal service.

Barron’s, the Dow Jones Business and Financial Weekly, is a weekly magazine with average circulation in 2003 of 297,000 that caters to financial professionals, individual investors and others interested in financial markets. Barron’s is printed in twelve of The Wall Street Journal’s 17 printing plants. It is delivered by second-class postal service and through National Delivery Service. About 67,000 newsstand copies are sold each week.

The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition is published nine times during the school year and is read by an estimated 785,000 students every month during the academic year in more than 4,900 middle-school and high-school classrooms throughout the U.S. Individuals, organizations and corporations sponsor nearly one-half of all subscriptions and schools sponsor the remainder. The Wall Street Journal Campus Edition is included in college newspapers throughout the U.S. and includes the week’s top business news and feature stories.

International Publications

The Wall Street Journal Europe, which had an average circulation in 2003 of 89,000, is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium and printed in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Israel. It is available on the day of publication in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and North Africa. In 2003, the content of the international editions of the Journal was bolstered with the addition of exclusive news and opinion articles from the Washington Post.

The Asian Wall Street Journal, which had an average circulation of 79,000 in 2003, is headquartered in Hong Kong and printed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea and Indonesia. It has the largest advertising market share of any pan-regional business newspaper in Asia. The Asian Wall Street Journal took home the Excellence in Newspapers award, the Excellence in Newspaper Design award, and the Best Opinion Piece in this year’s The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards.

The Company also publishes The Wall Street Journal Special Editions, which are a collection of Journal pages in local languages distributed as part of 34 newspapers in 35 countries. The Wall Street Journal Americas, serving Central and South America, is the centerpiece of the Special Editions published in Spanish and Portuguese in 18 leading Latin America newspapers.

The Far Eastern Economic Review is published weekly in Hong Kong and is Asia’s leading English-language business magazine, providing authoritative news and analysis on Asian business, economics and politics. Its circulation in 2003 was about 90,000, which was concentrated in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, with more than 13,000 copies sold in North America and Europe. In 2003, The Far Eastern Economic Review won in the Specialized Reporting category at the Society of Publishers in Asia awards.

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING

Electronic publishing includes the operations of Dow Jones Newswires, Consumer Electronic Publishing and Dow Jones Indexes/Ventures. Consumer Electronic Publishing includes the results of WSJ.com and its related vertical sites as well as the Company’s licensing/business development and radio/audio businesses. Revenues in the electronic publishing segment are mainly subscription based and comprise about 20% of the Company’s revenues.

Dow Jones Newswires

Dow Jones Newswires is the premier provider of real-time business and financial news offering real-time, comprehensive news and information for financial professionals around the world. Its news is displayed on approximately 293,000 English-language terminals worldwide, in addition to some foreign language terminals, providing users with real-time information on equities, fixed income, foreign exchange, commodities and energy. Dow Jones Newswires has a dedicated staff of more than 700 journalists in addition to drawing on the global resources of The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press (AP). Since 1999, Newswires also distributes selected content on a real-time basis to retail customers of on-line brokers.

Dow Jones News Service is North America’s leading source of business and financial news on U.S. and Canadian companies and markets for brokerage firms, banks, investment companies and other businesses. Capital Markets Report is the Company’s newswire covering the global debt and money markets. Corporate Filings Alert provides real-time news covering Securities and Exchange Commission filings, bankruptcy courts and government agencies.

The Dow Jones Economic Report and the Dow Jones Financial Wire, which are produced outside the United States with contribution from the AP since 1967, provide international economic, business and financial news to subscribers in 58 countries. In addition to these two broad international newswires, the Company and the AP offer specialized wires dedicated to the coverage of European and Asian equities, banking and foreign exchange markets. Other newswires provided in alliance with the AP include the World Equities Report, which serves U.S. institutions investing in international markets.

Dow Jones Newswires also publishes in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Korean, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, German and Russian.

In March 2003, the Company implemented Phase I of its Newswire of the Future, Dow Jones News Plus, which is a Web-style product that improves the presentation of the newswires, adding clarity, links, stock quotes and convenience to news feeds. The Company also produces newsletters that cover targeted industries and trading arenas. The largest newsletter, Daily Bankruptcy Review, provides readers with a compendium of large bankruptcy filings throughout the U.S. Other newsletters target niche-investing communities. In 2003, the Company purchased Technologic Partners, a closely held publications and events firm, which has eight online newsletters and produces six conference events annually. Technologic Partners was combined with the Newsletters group within Dow Jones Newswires.

In 2003, Dow Jones Newswires won many accolades including News Provider of the Year, Highest Customer Satisfaction and Best Financial News Service.

Consumer Electronic Publishing

The Wall Street Journal Online (WSJ.com), introduced in 1996, is a paid subscription site on the Internet that offers continuously updated coverage of business news both in the U.S. and abroad. WSJ.com content is created by its own dedicated journalists in conjunction with the global resources of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The Wall Street Journal Online has undergone a significant redesign which was launched in January 2002, featuring easier to navigate pages, state-of-the-art personalization and a more reliable and flexible technology platform. This redesign is contributing to increased usage and advertising as well as the roll-out of new online products. In addition to continuously updated news, subscribers have access to more than 30,000 in-depth company background reports, an archive of news articles, and personalized news and stock portfolios. WSJ.com, which won the Best Newspaper Web site Web Award in 2003, had 689,000 subscribers at the end of 2003 and was the largest paid subscription news site on the Internet.

Other consumer sites in the Journal Network include OpinionJournal.com, which provides commentary on global issues from The Wall Street Journal editorial page; CareerJournal.com, which gives career guidance and job-search services for executives; StartupJournal.com, the premier Web site for entrepreneurs seeking guidance on starting or buying a business or franchise; CollegeJournal.com, which provides guidance and job-search services for future business leaders; and RealEstateJournal.com, a comprehensive guide to commercial and residential property.

Consumer Electronic Publishing also includes the Company’s radio/audio business and its consumer electronic licensing/business development division, which offers electronic rights to use Dow Jones’ content. The Wall Street Journal Radio Network produces and distributes late-breaking business reports during the week to more than 210 radio stations across the country, covering 92% of the population.

Dow Jones Indexes/Ventures

In 1997, the Company began licensing the Dow Jones Industrial Averages as well as other indexes as the basis for trading options, futures, unit trusts, annuities, exchange traded funds, mutual funds, derivatives and specialized structured products. Dow Jones Indexes now offers more than 5,000 indexes.

Dow Jones Ventures include the Company’s reprints/permissions. The reprints/permissions business sells print or electronic reprints of The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s stories.

COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS

Community newspapers consists of the Company’s wholly-owned Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. Revenues in this segment are largely dependent on local consumer-based advertising revenue and comprise about 20% of the Company’s revenues.

During the second quarter of 2003, the Company’s Ottaway Newspapers subsidiary acquired The Record of Stockton California, enhancing the Company’s community newspaper portfolio. The Record has daily paid circulation of 59,985 and Sunday circulation of 70,732, based on 2003 ABC circulation figures. Also, in the fourth quarter of 2002, the Company purchased two small papers in southern Oregon, The Ashland Tidings and the Medford Nickel. In the first half of 2002, the Company sold five of its low-growth community newspaper properties, which completed the divestiture phase of its long-term strategy of enhancing its community newspaper portfolio.

Ottaway publications now include 15 general-interest dailies, published in nine states: California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Average 2003 circulation of the dailies excluding properties sold and acquired, was approximately 379,000; Sunday circulation for 11 newspapers, on this same-property basis, was 422,000. Ottaway also publishes more than 30 weekly newspapers and “shoppers.” The principal administrative office of Ottaway Newspapers is in Campbell Hall, New York. The primary delivery method for the newspapers is by carrier delivery.

STRATEGIC ALLIANCES (Included in Equity in Earnings (Losses) of Associated Companies)

Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC (Factiva) is a 50/50 joint venture launched in mid-1999 with Reuters Group Plc. Factiva is the number one provider of global news and business information to corporate end users and holds the number two position, based on revenue, in the archival business news and information marketplace. Factiva’s business information sources include Dow Jones and Reuters Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, plus nearly 9,000 essential sources and another 10,000 business-oriented Web sites from around the world. These sources provide current news, historical articles, local-language articles, market research and investment analyst reports, and stock quotes.

CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia Pacific are 50/50 joint ventures between Dow Jones and NBC. In early 1998, NBC and Dow Jones re-launched their business information channels in Europe and Asia Pacific as CNBC, a service of NBC and Dow Jones. These overseas services more than 80 million households on a full-time basis and 30 million households on a part-time basis.

SmartMoney is a 50/50 joint venture with Hearst Corp. SmartMoney magazine, The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business, featuring sections on personal investing, spending and saving money, has circulation of more than 800,000 copies. SmartMoney also includes SmartMoney.com and SmartMoney Custom Solutions, a custom publishing business.

Vedomosti, or The Record, a joint venture held equally by Dow Jones, Pearson and Independent Media, was introduced in 1999. Vedomosti, considered the only independent business newspaper in Russia, is published Monday through Friday. Circulation reached 55,000 in 2003, with original content created by 69 local reporters and editors and content from The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times translated into Russian.

STOXX, Ltd was formed in 1998 by Dow Jones Indexes and the leading exchanges of France (SBF-Bourse de Paris), Germany (Deutsche Borse) and Switzerland (Swiss Exchange). The futures contract on the Dow Jones Euro 50 has the largest open interest of all futures contracts in Europe and the second largest worldwide. In 2002, the 25% share owned by the French exchange was purchased pro-rata by the three remaining partners, which now own 33.33% each of STOXX.

In January 2004, Dow Jones and Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd., publisher of the Times of India and the Economic Times, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to create a new venture in which Dow Jones would own 26% (maximum foreign ownership permitted in India) and Bennett Coleman would own the remaining 74%. The Wall Street Journal in India, which is expected to be launched in 2004, will be aimed at global Indian business readers and international business travelers and will use the Journal’s global content. The transaction is subject to execution of definitive agreements and regulatory approval.

In December 2003, the Company and the von Holtzbrinck Group exchanged equity shareholdings so as to increase the Company’s interest in The Wall Street Journal Europe to 90% from 51% and reduce the Company’s ownership of the von Holtzbrinck Group’s business daily, Handelsblatt, to 10% from 22%, with news and advertising relationships continuing.

Other equity investments include OsterDowJones Commodity News, a commodity newswire in partnership with Oster Communications, Inc.; HB-Dow Jones S.A., a part-owner of Economia, a publishing company in the Czech Republic; CareerCast, Inc., a leading supplier of data services to employers and online career sites; and F.F. Soucy Inc. & Partners, L.P., a newsprint mill in Canada.

RAW MATERIALS

The primary raw material used by the Company is newsprint. In 2003, approximately 213,000 metric tons were consumed. Newsprint was purchased principally from 10 suppliers. The Company is a limited partner in F.F. Soucy, Inc. & Partners, L.P., Riviere du Loup, Quebec, Canada. F.F. Soucy furnished 19% of total newsprint requirements in 2003. The Company has signed long-term contracts with certain newsprint suppliers, including F.F. Soucy, for a substantial portion of its annual newsprint requirements. For many years the available sources of newsprint have been adequate to supply the Company’s needs.

COMPETITION

Dow Jones print publishing businesses compete with a wide range of information providers in many different channels of distribution. All metropolitan general interest newspapers and many small city or suburban papers carry business and financial content as do many Internet-based services as well as television and radio. In addition, specialized magazines in the business and financial field, as well as general news magazines publish substantial amounts of business-related material. The Journal also competes for advertising with non-business publications offering audiences of similar demographic quality, such as technology and lifestyle magazines. Nearly all of these services seek audiences and seek to sell advertising, making them competitive with Dow Jones’ publications and services.

The Company’s newswires compete with other global financial newswires including Reuters Group Plc, Bloomberg L.P and other organizations that publish financial news. The Company’s newswires maintain a stronger market position in North America than internationally.

Consumer Electronic Publishing competes with other Web sites that offer continuously updated coverage of business news as well as licensing of electronic content. Unlike WSJ.com, competitors do not, for the most part, utilize a full online paid subscription model, and most remain free sites. Competitors include FT.com, New York Times Digital, TheStreet.com, Bloomberg, Forbes.com, Yahoo!Finance, CNET, MarketWatch, AOL/CNNfn and MSNMoney/CNBC.

Dow Jones’ index-licensing business competes with various organizations that develop and license indexes, including Standard & Poors, The Financial Times, and Morgan Stanley/Capital International.

Ottaway Newspapers competes with the metropolitan general-interest newspapers, and other community newspapers as well as radio and television stations in their respective local markets.

Factiva competes with various business information service providers, including Dialog Corp., a division of The Thomson Corporation; and Lexis-Nexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Plc. Factiva also competes with various online, Web-based information services.

The Company’s international television ventures compete with various international satellite networks that not only specialize in general news but also provide business programming. Also, individual television stations, networks and cable channels in each country broadcast programming that competes for advertising and the attention of viewers in their respective markets.
 

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