YouSaid · the spoken record

Almar Latour

lines on the record: 78
first: 2025-03-10
most recent: 2025-03-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So I think you cast that as an existential risk. I can also cast that as an opportunity. I like to be aware of the existential risk, take the precautions there. But mainly focus on the opportunity and meeting that demand. And I think we haven't met that demand by any stretch. I think there's a huge opportunity for us and for other publications lying ahead to meet that demand. And I think that demand will actually only grow.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Undeniably, there's also huge demand for reliable information. People are craving it more than ever before. In fact, the more noise there is, the more people are confused and the more they are reaching for, hey, tell me what this means. We see this in our data, right? We see this when there are moments of friction in society or in business or in geopolitics, any market. see a spike and people coming to us for free, but also we see a spike in subscriptions. Demand for reliable information, I think, has gone up as the pool of unreliable information has grown or uncertain information. Some of it might be reliable, some of it might not be.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The game is, or the challenge is convince someone that it's to their benefit to invest in having access to reliable information, whether that's for making decisions in the realm of investments or technology or policy, or whether it's hyper local, and I actually want to understand what's going on in my community, some of that I might get from AI, but some of that I might not and I might want to invest a small amount of money to understand what's happening in my community. And there are some examples of that popping up. And I think we'll see in response to this huge question that you're asking. We will see innovation in journalism and a lot of creativity and then in years to come where undeniably with the truth. That you just presented this flood of information, mixed quality”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I understand why people would buy the Wall Street Journal or some of Dow Gens as products we should come to, but that's the bigger picture, right? It's convincing the next consumer that they should pay for information as opposed to picking a filter bubble on social media. Whether or not that's AI or if it's social media or if it's just algorithms or whatever, that seems like the challenge the media faces.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say where as affordable is a cup of coffee a day. I mean, everyone drinks coffee. I think it's a myth that access to Reliable information is unaffordable. It is an individual choice. I realize it's a hard choice to make if you don't have significant disposable income. And that's what you're indicating. But I do believe that there's also a choice to be made.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know there's that line a lie goes around the world six times when the truth is putting on shoes, it feels like we might be describing a world where regular people are awash in a sea of free lies, right, that come to them on social media, the social media companies are all giving up on fact checks. Various billionaires say whatever they want on podcasts with no pushback. And then what you are providing is a very expensive source of truth or hopefully what I am providing is an affordable source of truth.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are providing Gen AI UX and new interactions for consumers. They have gotten to that point by using information where you need an acknowledgement that information has value, certainly our information, and that if you want to use that information on an ongoing basis and make sure that some of your Gen AI produced content answer to queries is current and is reliable, you'll have to pay us for access if you value that. And so that part we cannot skip over. There's a whole other part to this where we don't yet exactly know how the user is going to interact, but we see the trending there. But that part, we have to get right. And we're in the middle of that. Or maybe we're at the first part of that still.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Large players in the AI space recognized that value and our push in first instance is to make sure that there is a commercial agreement around that. And I think in many cases that is on both sides of that fence, the preferred outcome. And then where we can't reach a commercial agreement, whether fundamental differences of opinion, we are prepared in some cases to say, okay, then we'll fight it out in court. And so we've walked both paths with a preference for the first. But I'm still answering your question as to what's existential here and is there an existential threat. You spun it forward and we can get to that, what it means for the end user and how consumers respond to that. But I think first we got to get to that, the starting blocks, if you will, which is, okay, these are the companies that are.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, first, I think you're absolutely right in that the bar on being distinctive by content or news or information that you create has gone way up. And so you have to be more discerning into where you focus at. You ask about the existential threat around AI. That goes back to the recognition of value. And in the first instance, I want to make sure that the industry, but certainly Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal and all of our publications don't fall into a trap that is similar to two decades ago when all information had to be free and people took scraps from search engines, et cetera, and then found out over time that, hey, we've lost effectively, that we see that that market. And so that's why we're investing time and resources right now into making sure that”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That recognition of value is very challenging. I understand why it happens in the business community. I even don't understand what happens for us than TechPress because it's often tradable. So you can pay a high rate to the Wall Street Journal if you are a Wall Street trader or an investor, some other kind of business professional, because the information has such clear value to you that you can use to trade upon in some way to make a deal or make an investment and buy or sell a stock. I think for the average consumer, that information is not tradable. They can just open TikTok and maybe there's some influencer reading the Wall Street Journal to them for free. And that elimination of scarcity, I think, has been the fundamental challenge. It was the challenge we went to social media. The challenge we went to these social video platforms. It feels like...”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, but people get that wrong. I think you're absolutely right that that might be sort of a prevailing tendency, but I don't think it should be. The prevailing focus, I think, should be where do you make a difference in the news and information that you offer? How do you make that distinctive? How do you add value? How do you allow people to make decisions based on that? How do you convince people that they should recognize the value of the information that you offer? And people in the past used to say, oh, you're a subscription business, you're at a Wall Street Journal because you're all about business and therefore that doesn't apply to anything else. I don't think that is true. I think people recognize value of a lot of different types of information and doesn't just have to be about business. And so I think there is a lot of opportunity actually in shifting from this austerity mode to creation mode and building mode.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but if your answer to that time and time again is, okay, I'll cut in order to make ends meet, you're not addressing something at the base. You're not addressing something in your model. You might not be addressing something correctly in the way you're organized, maybe where you're focused. So that to me was never an acceptable method to grow or to create great journalism. I understand that sometimes as a company in any industry, you can have your back against the wall. You may have to cut in order to make ends meet. But that's not a strategy.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Leading subscription driven news organization. And we grow by investing in our journalism, not by shrinking our journalism. So we're not, there's sometimes a temptation to be in media and austerity mode and just take away in order to eke out a profit. That's not us and that's not how we're growing whatsoever.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It meanders every once in a while, but the goal is pretty clear. We intend on growing in three ways. One is by going deeper, so investing in a depth of our content, of our data, over analytics, by growing wider, and that is by adding new areas of expertise. So last week we announced our agreement to acquire Oxford Analytica, so going deep in geopolitics. That's an addition. But in future investments, once they're part of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, we will probably invest in going deeper into that area of geopolitics. And then the third way of growing is by connecting everything that we have, meaning that there should be easier access to the data that underlies everything of Dow Jones for everything that we do at the Wall Street Journal. Now, as to your question, investing in the newsroom, investing in the newsroom is a goal in itself. We are a success.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think we should tether our investments in AI to any individual AI deal. So that's not how I look at it. And so it's not like, oh, AI brings in this much money and now I can invest this much in AI. You could, I guess, rationalize. AI in the newsroom or in the newsroom. We have our investment priorities and we're following a game plan that we've been following for a while.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come back to the AI deals you've struck. I want to talk about them expansively, but just in this context. Like so many publishers, you've struck a deal with OpenAI, you've struck deals with other AI companies. Are those providing enough revenue for you to invest against in the newsroom? Or are you still in wait and see mode with those deals?”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is a current of tech that runs through every story at the Wall Street Journal, runs through everything at Dow Jones in two ways. As a story and as technology, right? There's not a part of the Wall Street Journal. There's not a part of Dow Jones where tech does not feature. And therefore tech in isolation is one way of covering this in addition. Tech becomes a core part of many other beats and many other areas that we cover. Tech is a horizontal and it's a vertical at the same time.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think one of the questions I have, I run a tech publication and what is nominally a tech publication. And we are. We were heavily invested in covering policy. Yes. One of the lines we've always used a cliche even is that the diversion can cover everything because everything is now a tech story. And that was a way, I think 10 years ago. Maintaining a broad focus, and now it's very real. Elon Musk is at the State of the Union. You can see the tech giants fighting tooth and nail against the Digital Services Act and the EU. And that is now a part of American foreign policy. Do you see that as, okay, maybe all of the Wall Street Journal is about tech in that way? Is that getting more expansive for you?”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't take the snapshot, I guess, is what I headed at, that this is a moment in time. Talk again in a year, and our tech coverage should be broader, deeper, and probably have a larger following.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This shift, like any other shift that Emma has gone through, is not to eke out more profit by having fewer resources. There is an overall climate inside our company. You see our earnings growing and you see our revenue grow and our subscription base growing. We will invest wherever there's a good business case to be made and tech and the cross-section of tech with policy, with politics, with global trade, with society is one of the top stories of top priorities for Dow Jones, top stories in the world. So don't take a snapshot and say, okay, we're going to stop there. This is a top priority. It will permeate tech will permeate everything. It's permeating everything right now, looking at Washington or looking at announcements from Macron or in France.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In tech, which is dominating the world. And I'm just wondering about that resource allocation, because that's the role of the publisher, I think. Yeah, well. It is in the sense that the newsroom has a budget, and we support quality journalism. And frankly, we are so successful at this moment as a company that all of our investments are in enhancing the quality of our journalism, enhancing quality of our data or analytics, et cetera. I think it's important to make a distinction, and this is hard when you go through what is at an individual level super, super, super hard, what happened yesterday and many times in journalism.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With quite a few of those people. As you know, I was a tech reporter myself as well. But overall, what Emma has focused on and what the journal and Dow Jones are focusing on is going deeper and having more exclusivity, more quote-unquote proprietary content. And those moments like yesterday are absolutely never easy. I think I see a thesis of Dow Jones as a company, and we'll come to the big picture in a second here. Yes, yes, yes. The idea is you're going to give a bunch of people in the business world an edge and information edge, whether it's with the Dow Jones information services or some of the AI tools or with the Wall Street Journal, which gets a bunch of scoops and tells people stuff they didn't know before. But I'm just kind of looking at this broadly. Dow Jones is part of News Corp. I'm looking at News Corp's latest financials from last month. Revenue at Dow Jones is up to $600 million. That's up 3%. Your earnings are up 7% to $174 million. But the cuts are like.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That. And generally, when you look at, and I'm not speaking specifically about the San Francisco Bureau, about tech, but generally when you look at the changes that have been brought in, she has brought in new talent and she has an antenna for what she thinks works there. And one of the areas where you see that very pronounced in recent months even is in Washington, D.C., that has gone through several cycles of changes. And so she's brought in new people that has had consequences. And the marching orders are slightly different where there is a closer connection to the center of the newsroom where the decisions about news can be made in context of a broader story, a macro story that's happening around the world rather than in isolation around a certain topic. So that's the context for yesterday. I'm not going to comment on specific individuals or specific plans. From Emma, I'll leave that to her.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Emma was hired with a remit of helping to increase engagement with our existing readers and to expand our readership and to maintain and enhance the quality of our coverage. She has set out over the past two years, really, to rethink how she wants to offer news with the Wall Street Journal newsroom. Her consistent message, and this is one that I subscribe to, is distinctive journalism is what makes the difference, knowing the interesting story, the story behind the story, and to have exclusive journalism and exclusive insights. So that I say as a preface because Emma has been making changes to nearly every part of the Wall Street Journal and continues to do that. And so what happened yesterday was a continuation of”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, I'm personally very interested in how you structure a newsroom to cover tech. Why make that decision? Why get smaller? This is a newsroom decision, so this is squarely the terrain of Emma Tucker, who is a new editor, relatively speaking. She's year two, moving into year three.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's just get right into it all Mar Latour, CEO, Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Here we go. You are CEO of Dow Jones and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Welcome to Dakota. Great to be here. Thank you. I have a lot to talk about with you. There is an entire set of, I think, complicated AI questions that might be existential for the media industry, but you're heavily invested in building some of that technology and building some of those services, which I think is interesting. Yes. There's the general state of the press in 2025, which I want to talk to you about. I know you're very interested in press freedom. Yes. But it happens, and I have you on the day after the news. And so I want to start with news. Just last night, the Wall Street Journal, of which you are the publisher, restructured how it covers tech and media that involves cutting about 10 or 12, 15 editors and reporters.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Insight into all of that. He's made deals with AI companies like OpenAI, he's suing other AI companies like Perplexity for training without permission, and he's pushing to build his own AI data products for Dow Jones customers. On top of that, he is a fierce defender of press freedom, who fought to have Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich released after being imprisoned in Russia for over a year. While still working in News Corp, whose chairman Rupert Murdoch has deep ties to Trump and who has overseen a vastly more polarized and politicized news media. So Omar and I talked about all of that, and I really pushed him on a few of his answers, especially right at the top of the conversation when I asked him about the journal cutting a huge chunk of its tech reporting team literally the day before we recorded. To his credit, Omar was game, and he young in there for all of it, but you will hear him literally congratulate me for almost getting him to slip up. I did my best, there's a lot going on in this episode, and I think many of you will have thoughts on it.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Li Patel, editor in chief of the Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Omar Latour, who is publisher of the Wall Street Journal and CEO of its parent company Dow Jones, which is most easily thought of as a huge research and data provider for other companies. And Dow Jones itself is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which we'll come back to that. Now, Omar is a fascinating guy. He started as a news assistant at the journal in the 90s, spent time as a tech reporter, and eventually rose through the ranks to become CEO in 2020, putting him in charge of how all of it makes money. And if you've been paying attention, you know it's a tough time to be making money in the news business, especially the paid news business. There are the usual challenges of competing with social media platforms flooded with free content, but also new challenges like AI copyright fights and now even the Trump administration, which has been pushing hard to shut down critical reporting and limit press freedom.”
2025-03-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT