According to a memo to staff, a new group has been established at publisher Dow Jones to cover breaking business news for the Newswires, Online Journal, and often for the company's print publications. The move signals a big shift at the company: by putting all of the spot news coverage under one umbrella, the company will ensure that multiple stories aren't being written about the same news, and will free up time for reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal to write longer, more analytical pieces. The full release:

(Via Romenesko):

From: Reynolds, Cathy
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 1:01 PM
To: WSJ All News Staff
Cc: Lipschutz, Neal
Subject: FW: Spot Announcement

Colleagues:

We're pleased to announce the creation of a new group at Dow Jones,
based in Harborside, with an important mission in this new era: to
coordinate and handle coverage of major announcement-driven and
breaking U.S. corporate news for the Newswires, the Online Journal
and, in many cases, the print Journals.

The group, under the direction of Jeff Sutherland, will spearhead a
broader change in how we handle spot corporate news, company-wide.

Starting in January, Newswires will cover virtually all disclosure and
breaking corporate spot news from the outset. Headlines and rewrites
of press releases—always the purview of Newswires—will continue to
come from Newswires. In addition, guided by Jeff's new operation,
Newswires reporters will produce most corporate-news writethroughs --
sometimes several times, depending on the nature and importance of the
story -- for the online, overseas and U.S. Journals.

This will bring about significant changes for everyone involved in the
news process.

For Newswires, this will mean fuller participation in the spot-news
process in the U.S. and a broader responsibility to quickly produce
stories that serve all groups.

For WSJ.com staff, the time saved in not duplicating these stories
will be put to tasks more geared to the online world -- blogs,
infographics, videos, podcasts, and additional sidebars or other
elements that add to readers' understanding of business and world
news. Online editors also will contribute frequently to the editing of
spot news.

For WSJ reporters and editors, this change will help focus their
efforts on interpretive and longer-form journalism. In many cases, a
story produced by the corporate-news desk will stand for Journal
editions overseas and in the U.S. However, Journal reporters will
remain responsible for their companies and industries. They will be
expected to follow announcements and conference calls, to read the
stories produced by the new desk and to look for ways they can add
real value or analysis. Value-added material will usually be sent as
soon as possible—not held for the next print edition deadline—to
maximize the benefit to our real-time outlets, which operate in
intensely competitive spheres.

We believe that Jeff is the perfect editor to handle this new effort.
He has served as the Journal's Corporate News Editor since 2002, and
he is highly respected across Newswires, WSJ.com and the Journal. In
his new role, he will report to Bill Grueskin, managing editor of
WSJ.com, and he will continue to coordinate closely with editors and
bureaus at Newswires and the print Journal to ensure that all parts of
our franchise are served well by this operation.

The other editors who work for Jeff's corporate-news desk in the U.S.,
Hong Kong and Brussels will continue to report to Jeff, with one
exception: Sofia McFarland will transfer to the Journal's Global News
Desk at the World Financial Center, where she will have primary
responsibility for overseeing a new display feature that will start
next January in the Journal, Earnings Digest. Sofia will report to
National Editor Laurie Hays.

In upcoming weeks, Jeff will publish a fuller FAQ explaining how the
new desk will be staffed, how stories will be coordinated and how
inserts will be accommodated, along with a staff list showing editors'
hours, phone numbers and areas of responsibility. In the meantime, we
welcome your input into this important new effort.

Best regards

Brauchli/Grueskin/Lipschutz