Last week we published two videos from my interview with Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, covering his wisdom on charging for content and his thoughts on changes at the Journal under Rupert Murdoch.

In this third installment, Murray, who oversees the Journal’s website, talks about what qualities he looks for in hiring online reporters and how he manages journalists with different skillsets. Here’s the money quote:

My generation, the notion of marketing your own copy, that was like dirty. You know, don’t make me get near that. That’s somebody else’s job. But in fact, now, marketing — we don’t call it that, but that’s a big part of what online journalists do. Figuring out which blogs they need to be in touch with in order to keep their audience together, using Twitter to drive traffic to your stuff, figuring out the right mix.

Murray himself is active on Twitter under the username @alansmurray, where he offers a mix of financial news and inside-the-newsroom tidbits. (A tweet yesterday: “Slow news day….so far.”) I’ve been feeling more confident about the economy recently as Murray points to signs that the markets may have reached bottom.

A full transcript of the above video is after the jump.

In the digital area, you do want people who can be very fast and are willing to, you know, post multiple times a day and to multitask. [...] They really have to get engaged in finding their audience. They’re really — you know, my generation, the notion of marketing your own copy, that was like dirty. You know — don’t make me get near that. That’s somebody else’s job. But in fact, now, marketing — we don’t call it that, but that’s a big part of what online journalists do. Figuring out which blogs they need to be in touch with in order to keep their audience together, using Twitter to drive traffic to your stuff, figuring out the right mix.

I mean, the art of a good blog is figuring out the right mix between the piece that you know is going to get maximum search-engine hits to the piece that really defines what you’re doing that’s uniquely valuable. That second piece might not bring in as much traffic, but it’s the piece that’s gonna keep the traffic once you get it in the door. So all of that, which is part of the job of building a community, building an audience — those are totally new skills. And so when I say entrepreneurial, I’m talking about people who have shown some ability to play that game, which is very foreign to most journalists my age. [...]

You have to play to people’s strengths. What we’ve done is we’ve gone out and tried to figure out who are the people in the newsroom who can really adapt to that new style of posting seven times a day and enjoy it? Because, I mean — one thing about the web, and I think you guys know this, is if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, it’s gonna come through. It’s a much more personal medium. And so if you’re not in there, having a good time, excited about what you’re doing, there’s very little possibility that you’re readers are going to get excited about what you’re doing.

So there’s not much point in taking a reporter who — you mentioned one a minute ago — and saying you ought to be writing eight times on the web. It just doesn’t get you anywhere. So as a manager, what I’ve tried to do and what we’ve tried to do is find the people who are particularly suited for that and let them be the ones to do that. And they get very excited about it and juiced about it and enjoy doing it. And then try and create jobs for other people to do the type of journalism they do best.

Because we’re still doing the full range. We are gonna keep doing long-form journalism, and we’re gonna keep doing daily journalism, and we’re gonna be building up these real-time columns, all at the same time. So there’s a — for us, at least, there’s a wide swath of types of writing you can do, and it’s up to managers to get the right people in the right job.

The clearest indication of Rupert Murdoch’s influence over The Wall Street Journal might be pirates on the front page. Yesterday’s lead story reported the dramatic tale of hijacking and hostages on the high seas of East Africa. “U.S. Cargo Ship Repels Pirates” was the headline. (The cover of Murdoch’s New York Post was less restrained: “YO HO D’OH!” over a shot of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.)

Two years ago, before News Corp.’s purchase of the Journal, pirates might not have appeared in the newspaper at all, let alone across four columns at the top of A1. Not that they don’t belong — after all, there’s a business angle to maritime piracy — but what a shift from the days when the Journal’s front page proudly ignored yesterday’s goings-on in favor of sprawling features and analytical takes.

In the video above, deputy managing editor Alan Murray recalls how the Journal didn’t report on the Lorena Bobbitt saga for a month and a half in 1993 before breaking its silence with a long profile of the urologist who reattached John Bobbitt’s penis. That was the one and only mention of the Bobbitts in the Journal that year while the rest of the media seemingly covered nothing else.

The newsification of the Journal’s front page has been widely discussed, sometimes praised, and often lamented, but I’ve never heard anyone explain the metamorphosis in the way that Murray did in our interview:

What Rupert Murdoch has done is come in and say, look, you’re missing a big opportunity….These papers in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia are very weak. We should be going in there and saying to people, you don’t need this paper. We can give you everything that you need in The Wall Street Journal. And, in fact, that’s what we’re doing now, and that’s one reason why — our circulation isn’t skyrocketing, but it is inching up at a time when everybody else in plummeting.

That makes a lot of sense, but I also wonder about the long-term strategy. Offering more general-interest news may work to knock off some local newspapers, but what happens then? By shifting from unique content to widely replicable stories, is the Journal slowly relinquishing its competitive advantage in a news business that privileges singularity? I don’t know, but I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others in the comments.

To help frame these issues, I asked Murray about a memo sent earlier this month by departing Journal feature writer Joshua Prager, who accused the newspaper of abandoning long-form journalism. As you’ll see, Murray called the memo “a little exaggerated.” He acknowledged that there’s now “less room for the kind of long stories that were The Wall Street Journal’s tradition” but disputed the notion that the Journal has given up on the craft.

This is the second of a few videos from my interview with Murray. The first dealt with charging for content online and provoked an intriguing response from Portfolio’s Felix Salmon. I met Murray for the first time last weekend, and I’ve never met Prager, but I did work for the Journal in 2006 and 2007, including the summer when News Corp. succeeded in buying the paper. (I registered opposition to the takeover by hanging a sign above my desk and participating in a union-organized walkout, but my worst fears about The Murdoch Street Journal, I must admit, have not come to pass.)

Here’s a full transcript of the above video:

Alan Murray: One of the real insights that Rupert Murdoch brought to us: I’d been with The Wall Street Journal since 1983. Throughout all of that time until a year ago, I had been trained, all of us had been trained to think of the Journal as a second read. We just took it for granted that everybody read The L.A. Times or The Chicago Tribune or The New York Times, and they’d only come to us for the things we specialized in — business and finance — or for something, for particular perspective that we might have that adds to the story.

I mean, the great example I like to use is — it’s a little dated now, but when Lorena Bobbitt chopped off her husband’s member, it was a big national news story. Everybody wrote about it. The Wall Street Journal didn’t write a word. For a month, a month and a half, the name Bobbitt did not appear in The Wall Street Journal. But then, when we finally did, it was this wonderful page-one story about the microsurgeon who reattached, reattached Mr. Bobbit’s member.¹ And that was kind of our approach. Like, we wouldn’t write — if everyone else was writing about it, we felt like we didn’t have to until we had something special to say.

Well, what Rupert Murdoch has done is come in and say, look, you’re missing a big opportunity. And, by the way, he said this a year ago, long before we had all these bankruptcies. He said, you’re missing a big opportunity. These papers in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia are very weak. We should be going in there and saying to people, you don’t need this paper. We can give you everything that you need in The Wall Street Journal. And, in fact, that’s what we’re doing now, and that’s one reason why — our circulation isn’t skyrocketing, but it is inching up at a time when everybody else in plummeting. So I think it’s pretty significant. [...]

Voice over: On April 3, 2009, longtime Journal reporter Joshua Prager sent out a scathing resignation letter that accused the newspaper of abandoning long-form journalism. Prager was known for investigative pieces that took months, sometimes years to report.

Question: I wondered what you thought of Josh Prager’s memo and whether you thought his characterization of changes at the Journal was fair.

Murray: No, I thought it was a little exaggerated, actually. [...] There does have to be some consideration for the balance. I mean, Josh was quoted in The New York Observer at one point almost bragging about the fact that one year, two years ago, he only wrote one story in a year. It’s very difficult for newspaper economics to support people who only write one story in a year. It would have to be a very, very good story to justify that approach.

Question: Sure, sure. And they were good stories, but—

Murray: Oh, they were good. Josh is a very talented journalist. [...]

I think Mr. Murdoch has wanted a more urgent front page, a front page that’s really on top of the news. And that’s meant less room for the kind of long stories that were The Wall Street Journal’s tradition. I hope that doesn’t mean we’re going to give up on long-form journalism. I don’t think it does mean we’re going to give up on long-form journalism. I think we’ll do fewer of the kind of C+ long-form stories, but I think we can still develop the great A+ long-form stories.

¹ “Urology Was Boring Until Dr. Sehn Met John Wayne Bobbitt — The Patient’s Loss, Restored By Deft, Delicate Surgery, Is Now the Talk of the Town,” by Tony Horowitz, The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1993, A1.

Alan Murray, executive editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, doesn’t believe the canard that only financial news outlets can charge for content on the Internet. He concedes that the Journal has a built-in advantage — its audience reads the newspaper for business and profit — but in an interview this weekend, Murray told me, “The truth of the matter is there are tons of people out there paying large amounts of money, billions of dollars, to buy information every day.”

Check out the the first set of highlights from our conversation in the video above. (There’ll be a few more.) I’ve also sussed out five pieces of advice that Murray had for news organizations considering some sort of pay wall:

1. The best model is a mix of paid and free content. “It’s not pay wall/no pay wall,” Murray told me. The Journal allows free access to all of its political, arts, and opinion coverage, in addition to certain breaking news stories and all of its blogs. But the rest of the site requires a subscription.

2. You can’t charge for exclusives that will just be repeated elsewhere. This was my favorite lesson from Murray, who explained, “If it’s a big news story, if we report a takeover and — we could hold that behind the pay wall, but if we do, BusinessWeek or someone else will simply write a story saying ‘The Wall Street Journal is reporting x,’ and they’ll get all the traffic. Why would we do that?” So they drop the pay wall, “and take the traffic ourselves, thank you very much,” Murray said.

3. Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site. “That’s the been the mistake that some people have made in the past,” Murray said. Items with broad appeal are better used to build traffic that can be turned into advertising revenue.

4. Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches. It may be easier to identify those opportunities with financial news, but Murray suggested, for instance, that a local newspaper could consider charging for coverage of high school sports. “To the people who want to read it,” he said, “they really want to read it because maybe their kids are involved. Maybe they’re willing to pay for that or maybe there’s a photography service that’s connected to that where you can download pictures of your kids or of the game. But only if you’re a subscriber.”

5. The narrower the niche, perhaps the better. This was the bit of news in our interview: The Journal is planning what Murray called a “premium initiative” to sell “narrower information services” at a higher subscription rate to subsets of its readership. He was coy about what services will be offered but mentioned, as examples, energy coverage and some sort of news service for chief financial officers. (According to someone else I know at the Journal, those are, in fact, likely to be among the first offerings of this tiered-premium service.)

One item that I cut from the video but might be of note: Murray said that, despite frequent claims otherwise, less than 30 percent of the Journal’s online subscribers expense their subscriptions or take a tax write-off for them. I also asked Murray about the Financial Times, which allows free access to 20 articles before kicking in a pay wall. “I have to confess, I don’t really understand it,” Murray said. “It’s very confusing to me. You get some and then all of a sudden you start paying.”

Finally, I should note that while I met Murray for the first time this weekend, I worked in the Journal’s Boston bureau for a year in 2006 and 2007.

Here’s a full transcript of the above video:

Alan Murray: What’s happened in the last year and a half or two years is that we’ve discovered this is not a binary issue. It’s not pay wall/no pay wall. We’ve put more and more of our content outside of the pay wall. You can get all our political coverage, all our opinion coverage, all our arts and leisure coverage — free, available to anybody. A lot of big news stories, even business news stories, the coverage is available free because we know that if we don’t put it out there, you’ll just go to somebody else. [...]

Look, if it’s a big news story, if we report a takeover and — we could hold that behind the pay wall. But if we do, BusinessWeek or someone else will simply write a story saying “The Wall Street Journal is reporting x,” and they’ll get all the traffic. Why would we do that? So if it’s that kind of a big, broad-interest news story, we’ll put it outside the pay wall and go ahead and take the traffic ourselves, thank you very much. [...]

The Google News arrangement was an experiment. We thought, you know, let’s let people who are looking for a story come in and read one story, any one story. Seems to have worked pretty well. You know, when people go to Google News, they’re not, by and large, people who have a relationship with The Wall Street Journal. They’re just looking for the best story on a subject. If we happen to have that story, we let them read it. But if they like it enough that they want to have a relationship with us, if they care about our business and financial coverage, eventually they’ll have to subscribe. [...]

So, in a sense, we’re having our cake and eating it, too — by making those clear distinctions between what’s going to be most broadly popular, what’s most likely to attract traffic on the wider web, but keeping in mind what the core value proposition is that we offer to subscribers who come to us for business and financial news they can’t get anywhere else. [...]

The key is not to take your most popular stuff and put it behind a pay wall. That’s the been the mistake that some people have made in the past. You know, this is the story that most people want to read; therefore, that’s the one we’re gonna make them pay for. That’s not the right answer. The broad, popular stuff is the stuff you want out in the free world because that drives traffic, that builds up your traffic, and you can, of course, serve advertising to that audience.

I think what you have to think about is sort of narrower groups of interest where the interest might be deeper and more intense and therefore might make people willing to pay for it. I had this conversation with one newspaper editor where I said, look, what’s your equivalent of our business readers — a group of people who really need to read you because there’s something they desperately care about? And one of those editors said to me, it’s really local sports. You know, it’s the high school football game or the high school basketball game. Not necessarily of interest to all the paper’s readers — but to the people who want to read it, they really want to read it because maybe their kids are involved. Maybe they’re willing to pay for that. Or maybe there’s a photography service that’s connected to that where you can download pictures of your kids or of the game. But only if you’re a subscriber. That’s just one example, but I think that’s the kind of thing.

Look, the truth of the matter is there are tons of people out there paying large amounts of money, billions of dollars, to buy information every day. [...] I mean, there were a couple of guys in Texas who started the ultimate news service on the oil business with oil rig counts and all that. They sell it. They’re driving around in Mercedes. Well, why didn’t The Houston Chronicle do that? Why did that have to be some outsider? So the question is to find the information that has an enormous value to not necessarily a big group of people — maybe it’s a small group of people — but enough value that they’re willing to pay for it. And I think those opportunities are out there for lots of newspapers. [...]

We’re working on a premium initiative to launch a series of, as you say, niche or narrower information services that we can sell at a premium to smaller groups of subscribers on subjects that they care most about.

Question: What sort of subjects?

Murray: Oh, I mean, there are potentially thousands of them. Energy might be an example. Obviously a lot of our readers are deeply interested in financial subjects. Perhaps some sort of a news service for chief financial officers. There are a lot of ideas that are on the table. We’ve started prioritizing them — got a few that will probably come out first. But I’m not going to break that news on your video.