WSJ’s overseas project is part of a broader plan that could also involve the acquisition of the Financial Times (FT), if it were put up for sale.

"If the FT ever were to come on the market we would look at it," said Wall Street Journal's publisher, Gordon Crovitz. "But so far Pearson has [maintained] it's not for sale."

The FT and WSJ currently are in competition, with a near monopoly in their core markets: a merger of the two would give them control over the business newspaper market both in the US, in Europe, and would facilitate their establishment in Asia.

In the meantime, the Journal is considering the creation of local language websites outside of the U.S. Considering the array of languages spoken by its staff and incoming newswires, it shouldn’t be a logistical problem.

"One question we are considering this year is, is there an opportunity in local markets in Europe and Asia to create locally oriented versions of the online journal," he told the Guardian.

And the business model can be extremely profitable, at a low cost. WSJ’s experiment with a Chinese-language site in 2002 attracted 273,000 registered users and nearly 3 million page views per month.

"I'm not saying that we wouldn't publish in the print medium but, from a business point of view, the costs of starting something online are infinitesimal. New technology allows risk-taking and experimentation."

Source: The Guardian – New York Times