ABSTRACT
In 1999, Peter Kann, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, commented in a letter to the Dow Jones shareholders that, of all the information in the Annual Report, what gave him the most pride and satisfaction was the datum referring to the average of 47 minutes that each reader spends on the newspaper. Obviously, this was not significant in itself; instead, its significance had to do with the Journal’s type of reader, not only affluent and influential, but also probably tremendously busy, with very little time for inconsequential things. Kahn’s comment was something more than a rhetorical figure. The Dow Jones business, and of course the raison d’être of the Wall Street Journal, largely depended on those 47 minutes that around 2 million, mostly subscription-paying readers devoted to the newspaper daily.
