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
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' who also served as executive vice-president of
Dow Jones Dow Jones is a combination of the names of business partners Charles Dow and Edward Jones.
Dow Jones & Company
Dow, Jones and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow Jones & Company in 1882. That company eventually became a subsidiary of News Corp, an ...
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."
Biography
Crovitz is a
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...
graduate of the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
.
[ He received a law degree as a ]Rhodes Scholar
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international Postgraduate education, postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world.
Esta ...
from Wadham College
Wadham College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy Wadham, a ...
of Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
and later a law degree from Yale Law School
Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...
.[
In 1981, he started working as an editorial writer for ]The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
. The following year he became the founding editorial page editor for The Wall Street Journal Europe
''The Wall Street Journal Europe'' was a daily English-language newspaper that covered global and regional business news for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Published by the Dow Jones & Company, a News Corp company, it formed as a pa ...
, based in Brussels. In 1986 he was appointed to The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. He earned a Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Awards, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was e ...
Honorable Mention for Commentary and the 1990 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary. In 1992 he became the publisher for the Dow Jones Dow Jones is a combination of the names of business partners Charles Dow and Edward Jones.
Dow Jones & Company
Dow, Jones and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow Jones & Company in 1882. That company eventually became a subsidiary of News Corp, an ...
's Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and in 1996 was named the managing director for Dow Jones Telerate's Asia/Pacific region as well as chairman of Dow Jones in Asia. In 1997-98 he was named vice president of planning and development for Dow Jones.[Alt URL]
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Since leaving Dow Jones, he has co-founded and sold a start-up technology company and 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. Journalism Online, founded in 2009, was sold to RR Donnelley
R.R. Donnelley is an American integrated communications company that provides marketing and business communications, commercial printing, and related services. Its corporate headquarters are located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. In 2007, R ...
in 2011 for a reported $45 million. Google had launched a product in 2011 to compete with Press+, called Google One Pass, but shut the service down in April, 2012, with Press+ agreeing to grandfather its former customers. Crovitz was an early investor in Business Insider
''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...
.
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
Factiva is a business information and research tool owned by Dow Jones & Company. Factiva aggregates content from both licensed and free sources. Providing organizations with search, alerting, dissemination, and other information management c ...
, which he chaired for several years, and initiated the acquisition of publicly traded MarketWatch
''MarketWatch'' is a website that provides financial information, business news, analysis, and stock market data. It is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, along with ''The Wall Street Journal'' and '' Barron's.''
...
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 aged 22 years, was founding editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels.
In March 2018, Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill, partnered to form a new for-profit company, ''NewsGuard
NewsGuard is a rating system for news and information websites. It is accessible via browser extensions and mobile apps. It rates publishers based on whether they have transparent finances or publish many errors, among other criteria. NewsGuard ...
'', which claims to fight "fake news" by providing reliability ratings for over 7,500 U.S. websites to help online readers distinguish between legitimate news sources and those allegedly designed to spread misinformation. NewsGuard was launched on August 23, 2018.
He married Anne Alstott
Anne Lester Alstott is an American legal scholar. She is the Jacquin D. Bierman Professor in Taxation at Yale Law School.
Career
She graduated ''summa cum laude'' from Georgetown University in 1984 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1987. ...
(a professor at Yale Law School) on December 7, 1986. He is married to Minky Worden
Minky Worden is an American human rights advocate and author. She serves as Director of Global Initiatives at Human Rights Watch. She has been an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs since ...
, media director for Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
; they have three sons.
Crovitz has written many controversial editorials. In July 2012, he argued that Xerox-Parc's development of the Ethernet protocol meant that the private sector, not the government, created the Internet. Crovitz cited a book by Michael Hiltzik
Michael A. Hiltzik (born November 9, 1952) is an American columnist, reporter and author who has written extensively for the ''Los Angeles Times''. In 1999, he won a beat reporting Pulitzer Prize for co-writing a series of articles about corrupti ...
to support this argument but Hiltzik himself rebutted the claim. Crovitz's claims were also rejected as "revisionist" by Vint Cerf
Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Robert Kahn.
He has received honorary degrees and awards that inclu ...
, co-inventor of the TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
networking protocols that laid the foundations for the modern internet.
Notes
External links
Profile by Forbes
Profile by AllThingsDigital
*
*
C-SPAN ''Q&A'' interview with Crovitz, December 31, 2006
Interview on his post WSJ career
Podcast by Glenn Reynolds
Profile by International Herald Tribune
Profile by Guardian
Profile by Daily Telegraph
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crovitz, L Gordon
American male journalists
American newspaper editors
University of Chicago alumni
The Wall Street Journal people
Yale Law School alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford
American Rhodes Scholars
Gerald Loeb Award winners for Columns, Commentary, and Editorials