By OWEN MORRIS
I admit having a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. I know it's owned by the Tasmanian Devil himself, but the business section is good.
I also drink wine. A lot of wine. For tastings, for this blogging job, for my own enjoyment. I probably have a glass or more five nights a week and go through half a case or so a month.
What's the connection? Until the other day I didn't realize there was one. That's when I got a friendly e-mail from the Wall Street Journal announcing the introduction of its wine Web site. Not a wine e-zine, but a wine retail site. The Journal, in partnership with Direct Wines, is now selling the vino itself.
Newspapers are desperately looking for additional revenue streams but this one caught me by surprise. The Journal employs not one but two wine tasters, Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, so they take wine seriously. But opening up a wine store is an entirely different business from writing about wine.
It also opens the door to charges of collusion. I don't think any editorial staff would promote a certain wine that just happened to be on sale at WSJ Wine but given how many wines they review and how many the store has in stock, I could see it happening. And when it does, it's going to be much tougher to explain away the fact the paper's not being biased.
The Journal has taken steps to distance the wine retail store from its wine coverage. First, Wall Street Journal Wines has its own URL — https://www.wsjwine.com/ and there's no mention of the new site on the old one. (Yet.) But the logo and the font on the new site is clearly Wall Street Journal.
You can bet that other newspapers are watching closely to see if this succeeds. I'm just watching for good deals on wine.
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