Louis Gordon Crovitz is an American media executive and advisor to media and technology companies. He is a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal who also served as executive vice-president of Dow Jones and launched the company's Consumer Media Group, which under his leadership integrated the global print, online, digital, TV and other editions of The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch.com and Barron's across news, advertising, marketing and other functions. He stepped down from those positions in December 2007, when News Corp. completed its acquisition of Dow Jones. He writes a weekly column in The Wall Street Journal, titled "Information Age."
Crovitz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago.[1] He received a law degree as a Rhodes Scholar from Wadham College of Oxford University and later a law degree from Yale Law School.[1]
In 1981, he started working as an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal. The following year he became the founding editorial page editor for The Wall Street Journal Europe. In 1986 he was appointed to The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. In 1992 he became the publisher for the Dow Jones's Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and in 1996 was named the marketing director for Dow Jones Telerate's Asia/Pacific region. In 1997-98 he was named vice president of planning and development for Dow Jones.[2]
Since leaving Dow Jones, he has become a director and advisor to several companies, including technology-based media companies. He is a co-founder of Journalism Online, whose Press+ service enables news publishers to generate subscription revenues for their content on web sites and through tablets, e-readers and mobile devices.[3] Journalism Online, founded in 2009, was sold to RR Donnelley in 2011 for a reported $45 million. [4] He is a member of the board of directors of ProQuest, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Blurb and Business Insider. In addition, he is on the board of advisors of several early-stage companies, including SocialMedian (sold to XING), Hashable, Halogen Media, YouNoodle, Quid, Peer39, SkyGrid, ExpertCEO and Clickability. He is an investor in Betaworks, a New York incubator for social-media startups. He has also advised private equity firms on the acquisition of information and media companies. He has been named to the Silicon Alley 100.
While at Dow Jones, he led the redesign of The Wall Street Journal in January 2007, repositioning the print edition to focus on "what the news means," with the web edition addressing "what's happening right now," with the aim of rethinking what a newspaper should be in the Digital Age. He turned around the financial performance of the Journal to become strongly profitable after earlier losing money. He also led the creation of the online news service Factiva, which he chaired for several years, and initiated the acquisition of publicly traded MarketWatch as well as specialist services Private Equity Analyst, VentureOne and VentureWire, London-based news franchise eFinancial News and Frankfurt-based newswire VWD. He oversaw the growth of The Wall Street Journal Online to the world's largest paid subscription news web site, with over one million paying subscribers at the end of 2007. Earlier in his career at Dow Jones, he served as the corporate vice president for planning and strategy; in 1998, he helped sell the Telerate division and helped craft a three-year plan for the company focused on growing Internet revenues. He was editor and publisher of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong, doubling revenues, and at age of 22 years, was founding editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels.
He married Anne Alstott (a professor at Harvard law school as of 2010) on December 7, 1986.[1] He is currently married to Minky Worden, media director for Human Rights Watch; they have two sons.[5]