Mr. Mossberg has been the highly influential author of Personal Technology columns with The Wall Street Journal for two decades. He and Ms. Swisher collaborated as co-executive editors on All Things Digital, a separate Web site that covered technology and start-up news and also held conferences.
Colleen Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones, said the decision to part had been mutual but who would retain the rights to the All Things Digital brand and the archived content had not been decided.
“Right now we have not finalized plans with respect to the brand. The details still being worked out,” she said. Neither Ms. Swisher nor Mr. Mossberg could be immediately reached for comment. Nevertheless, on her Twitter feed, Ms. Swisher made it clear that Dow Jones owned the brand and would keep it. “They have ALWAYS owned it, even though Walt and I built it,” she wrote.
The question of whether Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg will be able to compete with the brand they built is of no small significance.
Technology coverage and conferences stemming from brands associated with technology coverage are a growing business in a largely bleak journalism landscape and one that many people are looking to exploit. AOL, the media company, is expanding conferences through its TechCrunch brand, for example.
Gerard Baker, editor in chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, said in a statement that The Journal was increasing its bet on technology coverage even without Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg, its most prominent stars.
“We plan to embark on a major global expansion of our technology coverage, which will include adding 20 reviewers, bloggers, visual journalists, editors and reporters covering digital. As part of this global push, we will also be expanding our conference franchise to include an international technology conference and building a new digital home for our first-class technology news and product reviews on The Wall Street Journal Digital Network,” he said.
Fortune, which was the first to report the news, noted earlier that Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg had hired the investment bank Code Advisors to find outside investors to support a move to become independent.
A person with knowledge of the deal said the two had backing, but no partners had been named at this point.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/business/media/2-top-technology-writers-are-leaving-dow-jones.html?partner=rss&emc=rss