I expect others have been keeping score on this topic, but I wonder how much longer print newspapers will continue to include stock tables? Yesterday, the flagship financial publication in the United States, the Wall Street Journal, announced “Changes Today in Our Financial Tables.” The changes?
The Wall Street Journal is streamlining its financial listings starting with today’s edition as more readers access stock, mutual-fund and other quotations on Internet financial sites, including The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com.
Hmmm… streamlining is a good euphemism for cutting down. I also wonder how many of the people who “access” quotations on “Internet financial sites” are actually doing that “accessing” on WSJ.com. Probably not as many as Dow Jones would hope.
Skeptical reading aside, there is no stopping the digital train here. No newspaper has a choice when it comes to paper for this information. I think it will be another decade here in the United States before the tables disappear from the print edition of the Journal (note: this already happened in Europe and Asia). For volatile information, this is a no-brainer. The follow-on question is… which information is next? Sports scores?