In a statement, News Corp., which owns Dow Jones, said Mr. Lewis would continue through the month and his successor would be named shortly.
“Will Lewis has overseen a remarkable period of growth and digital transformation at Dow Jones, making it the finest news and professional information business in the world,” said Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp., in the statement.
The announcement comes at a fraught moment for media companies as advertising revenue plummets.
But The Journal has emerged in recent years as one of several nationally oriented newspapers with broad name recognition, deep newsrooms and well-financed backers — others include The New York Times and The Washington Post. These media companies are seen as being able to weather and even thrive in an environment that has devalued local journalism and placed an imperative on circulation revenue, particularly digital subscriptions.
In the latest earnings release from News Corp., which bought Dow Jones for $5 billion in 2007, Mr. Thomson promoted Dow Jones’s progress on these fronts, noting double-digit growth in digital subscriptions and a proportion of circulation revenue coming from digital that was greater than The New York Times Company reported, as well as promising digital advertising trends.
In the last several weeks, as the coronavirus pandemic has dominated the news cycle, The Journal removed its paywall for virus-related coverage and had seen sharply higher web traffic and higher rates of new subscribers.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/media/dow-jones-wall-street-journal-william-lewis.html
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