Navigating the Mashup with John Wordock ’87

John Wordock already had a half-decade of journalism experience under his belt when he entered Waynflete’s 上学校 as a freshman in 1984. Graced with self-knowledge at a young age, he knew what he wanted to do (be a radio reporter) and where he wanted to do it (New York City or Washington, DC). 作为一个五年级的学生, I would get out my index cards and write down ball scores, 头条新闻, 还有天气预报,他回忆道。. “I’d read off the news pieces, play records in between, and record the whole thing on cassette tapes.”

在Waynflete, faculty members like Alice Brock, 彼得·汉布林, and Gary Hertz cheered Wordock’s enthusiasm. “They saw that I had a passion for journalism and they encouraged me to pursue it,” he recalls. “They ensured that writing was at the center of everything I did.“Wordock posted regular news reports on bulletin boards around the school that examined major news items of the day, 包括里根总统, 伊朗门丑闻, and the changing relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Wordock continued to work in radio while pursuing his undergraduate degree at Vassar College. He joined Bloomberg Radio in New York City while at graduate school at the Columbia School of Journalism and went on to cover politics and business as a radio reporter. 沃多克随后创办了MarketWatch.com’s radio network for six years, appearing on CBS stations in New York, 芝加哥, 和波士顿, before joining the Wall Street Journal in 2013 to head up its radio and podcasting group. “After you reach a certain experience level, you want to be able to influence what your industry is doing,他说.

加入战斗

新闻papers had suffered at the hands of Craigslist and job websites like Monster.com (the Journal weathered the storm better than most, thanks in part to its early transition to a paywall system). 打印 media executives were developing strategies to respond to the precipitous decline in ad revenue. 新闻 organizations abandoned their traditional silos in the pursuit of fickle customers (advertisers were also seeking stable ground). This “media mashup” continues unabated today, with the New York Times investing heavily in video and the Journal playing host to some of the most popular podcasts in the country. “Our executive team is very mobile-focused,Wordock说。. “85 percent of our audience listens to our shows on a mobile device, so my podcast work dovetails well with the Journal’s mobile strategy.”

A growing trend among listeners is the desire to build individual “à la carte” media experiences. An individual facing a 60-minute commute may listen to general news from one source, business news via a Journal podcast, and then conclude the listening session with a comedy show. Wordock’s team experiments with segment lengths that can range from three minutes to one hour. The Journal’s three most popular podcasts—What’s 新闻, 科技新闻简报会, and Your Money Matters—are some of the most highly ranked podcasts in the iTunes business and tech categories, 每一个都在十分钟之内. “Listeners appear to prefer short blasts of news when they can fit it in,“Wordock says.

Analytics enable news outlets to constantly experiment and make rapid iterative changes. “Our close relationship with 苹果 gives us access to a dashboard that tells us where listeners are, 他们是如何倾听的, and whether they’re downloading or streaming our content,Wordock说。. “The data also tell us that 70 percent of our podcast audience is under 49, which is right in our advertisers’ sweet spot.”

新常态

Finding success in this fast-moving field calls for an entrepreneurial mindset. 参与社交媒体, video, 博客, and podcasts is the new normal for journalists, with most job descriptions now calling for “multimedia journalists.“Wordock, whose team delivers content to media partners that include Google, 苹果, 亚马逊, 和Spotify, sees himself as the owner of a small business inside a major corporation. “I work with advertising and marketing strategists, 合伙开发人员, and mobile and desktop technology specialists,他说. “I really enjoy the combination of managing people and pursuing content.”

The unrelenting pace has a downside that will sound familiar to many—the inability to disconnect. Wordock rattles off a long list of hardware devices that accompany him at work. As a father to a 14-, 13-, and 10-year-old, the home front is fully wired as well. 具有讽刺意味的是, print newspapers are Wordock’s favorite escape from the digital world—particularly the local publications that he seeks out when he travels. “这不是屏幕，”他说. “新闻papers give my eyes a chance to relax!”