• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 1, 2010

Dow Jones & Company on Wednesday named Alisa Bowen as general manager of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.

Heading up the company's consumer digital business group, Bowen will be expected to drive strategy, development and operations for WSJ.com, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, SmartMoney.com, AllThingsD.com and all related mobile applications.

"Creating new and dynamic experiences for readers" is how Bowen describes her directive.

Reporting directly to Dow Jones President Todd Larsen, Bowen succeeds Gordon McLeod, who left The Wall Street Journal Digital Network in September.

Larsen obviously believes Bowen is the right woman for the job, although he admitted she is now responsible for "a large, fast-growing, digital business with high expectations for continued growth."

Expected to join Dow Jones on December 13, Bowen most recently served as SVP and head of business operations at the Thomson Reuters-owned Reuters Media. Prior to that role, she was the global head of consumer publishing, where she was responsible for global product development, as general manager of Reuters.com.

At Reuters, Bowen is credited with growing its consumer audience by 50% over two years.

Presently, WSJ.com and other digital Dow Jones products claim roughly 1.1 million paying subscribers, while in the most recent quarter, digital ad revenue at the Journal was up 29%.

"As a basis of comparison, for the same three month period The New York Times has forecast ... total digital advertising revenue ... to rise 14%," Les Hinton, CEO and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, boasted in a September memo, which was published online by PoynterOnline.

Earlier this year, The Journal embarked on a multichannel brand awareness and reader-outreach campaign. Under the slogan "Live in the Know," the campaign was created to communicate the idea of going beyond headlines and sound bites for a deeper understanding of news and events.

At the time, a company representative said the paper's unique paid-content model was indeed taken into consideration during the conception of the campaign.