• by Dana Blankenhorn , April 14, 2003

For content owners, the promise of the Internet is in turning a horizontal success into many vertical successes. The Wall Street Journal has begun putting this into practice.

Last week, the Journal announced it will launch the second vertical version of its Wall Street Journal online, designed for media and marketing. Todd Larsen, president of the consumer electronic publishing for Dow Jones & Co., said the new vertical will be modeled on a successful effort in the area of health, and will be followed by other, similar efforts.

Each "edition" carries the same price as the regular Online Journal, $79 per year or $39 if you get the print edition. Current subscribers may choose an edition's home page as their own view of the Journal, or continue using the main Journal page. With an edition, "We're putting it through a different lens or filter. What's News in the main Journal will be different from what you see in Media and Marketing."

The Health edition (http://wallstreetjournal.com/health), launched last year, has a Daily Scan, which summarizes news of interest to that sector. It has a separate editor who highlights health news for readers, and it has Michael Waldholz, the news editor for health and science in the print edition, producing a weekly column.

The Media edition will carry a similar editorial effort, Larsen said. "It's more than Web code. We're putting new exclusive features into these sections. These are edited sections that are going to be prioritized and packaged throughout the day."

The number of new subscribers each edition draws and the volume of ads they attract will measure success, Larsen said. "We see this as a valuable way to target advertising. This is one more way advertisers can get a targeted message in the Online Journal."

The Media and Marketing Edition will debut in mid-May. Larsen said the date of the launch has not been set. "We have a couple of columns lined up for media, but we don't have the final full lineup," he said. Assuming the Media and Marketing Edition becomes as successful as Health, Larsen said, the Journal will consider adding more.