In a strange twist of fate, The Wall Street Journal has launched two digital products, The Accelerators and Startup Journal, which will focus on entrepreneurs and startups [via The Next Web]. According to press releases quoted by The Next Web, The Accelerators is an “online forum” “for people who are starting a business, or just thinking about starting a business” “anchored by contributions from a diverse group of mentors—successful entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists, and technology and business thinkers.” Startup Journal will cover “the world of startups, funding, founders and entrepreneurship.” This is like Tom Sawyer attending his own funeral. Or Socrates, who committed court-ordered suicide by hemlock and reported on the sensation of the poison until he could no longer speak.
There is an unavoidable absurdity in the print-to-digital transition. Old media, in becoming new, is stuck for a while in an adolescence of zero authority. And yet, to reach maturity “awkward media” must masquerade as adult, must rehearse the behaviors of its usurpers, and must speak like and about its enemies. The Next Web quotes The Wall Street Journal Digital Network’s editor, Raju Narisetti: “The disruption within the startup world has been closely followed by our readers, and we saw a significant opportunity to provide our audience with more robust coverage by launching Startup Journal and The Accelerators.” Paradoxically, the disruption that has nearly destroyed the world of conventional newspapers is now the material of digital reportage. The Wall Street Journal will survive by narrating its own demise.
In order to transcend its digital competitors like VentureBeat, The Wall Street Journal needs to steal back lost time: time spent building loyal audiences, networks of informants, and structures of expertise. Most importantly, The Wall Street Journal needs to integrate these new, rather awkward product lines into a brand that is, as a consequence of the new media threat, in a state of violent evolution. I remain unconvinced that the division of “entrepreneurship and startup” coverage into discrete “verticals”—a vocabulary built by new media interfaces—can catalyze the newspaper’s transition into digital markets. The Wall Street Journal risks the birth of a “Daily Beast” that will cannibalize its parent.
